I'm pleased to announce that we have a new reviewer to CRITICAL CONDITION. His name is Steven Jackson and he wrote all the reviews that you will read below. I have been communicating with Steven for the past few years on a fairly regular basis; he was the one who convinced me to review mainly European fare in all genres and I thank him for that, as I have discovered a lot of real gems among the filmic paste jewelry that I wouldn't have known about without Steven's input (He also gave me the courage to create a Spaghetti Western section). Steven always makes me laugh, with his views on films, current events and anything else that comes his way. He even sent me a list (a book, really) of over 500 films he reviewed and when I was reading it, I was wiping away the tears of laughter he evoked from me. I wanted Steven to write for me for the longest time, but I was too scared to ask him, thinking it would harm our friendship in some weird way which I only understood. I finally got the nerve to ask him and he accepted. We decided he would write reviews for films that I wouldn't touch with a "ten foot pole", since he watches films of all genres that I wouldn't normally touch with a...well, you know. So sit back, relax and prepare to be entertained, not only by Steven's hilarious writing, but also his choice of films, many, I'm sure, you never heard of before. And that's what this website is all about!
The
Adventures of Hercules Part 2
(1985, Italy, Fantasy, Director: Luigi Cozzi)
Notable
actors: Lou Ferrigno! William Berger! Maria Rosario Omaggio! Claudio
Cassanelli! Venantino Venantini! Margie Newton!
The
lesser Gods have rebelled against Zeus and stolen his seven
thunderbolts, causing the moon to start bouncing around space like
some sort of crater-covered pinball! Only one person can put it
right, but he got turned into a constellation at the end of the last
film (what kind of reward was that?). Lou Ferrigno, who kind of looks
like my wife's brother if someone force-fed him protein shakes and
steroids for a decade is back, as Hercules!
That's all the plot set-up we get at the start of the film which is
more concerned with giving us yet another universe creation origins
story like the first HERCULES
film. This one involves Disco Space as usual, but for some reason
there's an eyeball looking out of a void like some sort of early
nineties techno video for good measure. You may remember Disco Space
from the first HERCULES film,
or STARCRASH, or
even DEMONS 6: DE
PROFUNDIS.
We also have too sisters - Urania and Glaucia, who have set out to
find Hercules in order to get him to stop witchdoctor Venantino
Venantini sacrificing them to some fire monster (which looks like the
being from FORBIDDEN PLANET).
Most hilariously of all is Venantini's outfit, which is surely the
most ridiculous outfit he's ever been asked to wear. It looks like he
was going to go out to some Halloween party dressed as a Glam rocker,
but then decided at the last minute to go as a really flamboyant drag
queen, but then thought that wasn't far enough and stuck on Tina
Turner's hair as well.
The film basically follows Herc as he goes around fighting monsters
who all have those lightening bolts inside them, which means we get a
never-ending parade of monsters for Hercules to punch in the face,
from the first monster who is so crap it resembles a very aggressive
shag pile carpet, to the bunch of guys who come out of a wall who all
looks like the 'green man' light you get at road crossings, to an
animated Medusa in a cave where a bunch of extras try to look like
they've been turned into stone but do a really terrible job at it.
Also thrown into the stew is the big return of William Berger as
King Minos! He gets brought back to life to kill Herc but instead
runs off to that weird place he lives (on a rock that looks like a
head in the middle of a lake in space), where he gets right down to
making his sidekick Daedelus make him some more technological rubbish
for him to throw at Herc. It didn't work in the last movie, but in
this film it somehow gives Berger the ability to kills gods, shoot
lasers from his eyes, and best of all, turn into Godzilla - in space!
No doubt the highlight of this amazing film is the last act, where
Herc and his sidekick end up in a very strange land where Herc and
Minos go up into the stars, where Minos becomes Godzilla and Herc
becomes King Kong! Now, at this point I'd like to point out that
director Cozzi goes absolutely nuts in this film with the special
effects - those colourful Eighties ones we all know and love. Here,
everything frazzles with animated light, eyeballs flash, and when
Herc hits something, the whole screen goes either red or green. Nary
a second goes by without the use of effects, and it all leads to the
battle in space which I think actually gave me a nose bleed.
And check out those crazy twins! Not Lou Ferrigno's undulating pecs,
but those cosmic freak winged kids one of the girls talks too. This
film is full of weird visuals in fact. Weird visuals, crazy monsters,
William Berger looking like he's about to burst out laughing, Claudio
Cassanelli looking like he's about to start crying (as usual), and
big Lou giving us one highly entertaining film. It's bad, but it's so
good. One of my favourites, along with the first one. Genuinely entertaining.
Afrika
(1973, Italy, Drama/Giallo, Director: Alberto Cavallone)
Notable
actors: Ivano Staccioli!
A
plot that jumps back and forth in time. Absolute shitloads of
racism. Is this a Quentin Tarantino film? No, it's another Alberto
Cavallone joint, and as you would imagine, it's all over the place.
A painter (Ivano Staccioli, from the giallo CLAP,
YOU'RE DEAD, the Formula 1 film LE
MANS - SHORTCUT TO HELL and the OTHER Formula 1 film FORMULA
1 - THE HELL OF THE GRAND PRIX) comes to an Ethiopian Hotel
to meet a young lady. The two quarrel and Ivano stomps out, only to
shortly afterwards hear a gunshot. The police find the lady dead of a
gunshot wound to the head, and they also discover that the victim is
a post-op transgender person. The police turn up shortly afterwards,
and when a woman in the hotel reveals that she is the victim's sister
and she saw Ivano leave the room, the film decides to get a bad case
of the flashbacks. Some relevant to the mystery, other just so
Alberto Cavallone indulge in his usual shock tactics. So those
looking out for that needn't worry.
The dead person was once a young gay guy called Frank, a budding
poet who was getting hassled in school by nasty girls and guys with
rather shocking haircuts. One day, Frank gets kidnapped by his
schoolmates, taken out into the African shrubland, and gang-bummed by
the macho classmates (doesn't that also make them gay, or are they
the kind of guy you find in prison who think you're only gay if
you're on the receiving end)? Either way, Frank's treatment leads him
to meet Ivano, which leads to further flashbacks as Ivano invites him
to stay, much to the chagrin of Ivano's bitter, horny, often naked
wife. Oh, and that rape? It was organised by Frank's own father, who
wanted to teach him a lesson and make him more of a man (by having
him botted? You're sending mixed messages there buddy).
The sister (who has no problem with showering naked in the presence
of her father. What the fuck is it with these Alberto Cavallone
films?) works in a leper colony, so that gives Cavallone plenty of
chances to shows us the effects of leprosy too as an 'added bonus'.
He also throws in cow slaughter, a guy hand feeding a huge hyena (I
didn't think they were that big), and even starts the film with Ivano
witnessing two women being beaten and shot before the white policeman
in charge apologies for delaying him because 'he didn't realise he
was white'.
Frank and Ivano's relationship deepens as Ivano grows more distant
from his wife, who has history of seducing Ivano's mates and still
has the hots for him, which leads to her spending most of the film
naked and trying it on with a disinterested Ivano. That side of the
plot makes sense, but the rather expedition into the wilds of Africa
by Ivano, his wife, and all their friends doesn't add much, except to
show how horrible these people are as they insult the locals (one
woman asks upon seeing a breast-feeding native "Is she giving
milk or coffee?", take part in native ceremonies (Ivano's wife
naked again), or just cheat on each other, including one woman
getting it on in front of her blind husband.
The mystery does eventually get solved, but I'm not revealing it
here. There's not much suspense in this film and not much mystery
either. Just a load of white people hating on each other while the
theme of colonialism is touched upon now and again when things get
slow. Who knows what Cavallone was trying to say here, but I've
thought that about every film I've watched of his. He went on to make
arty porno films before dying at the age of fifty-nine, having wanked
himself to death.
Alone
Against Terror (1983, Giallo,
Spain, Director: Jesus "Jess" Franco - it is Christmas
after all).
Notable
actors: Lina Romay! Ricardo Palacios!
Pantomime-style
antics here as Lina Romay, described by one character as a 'retarded
paralytic' lives a horrible existence at the hands of her evil
stepmother, her ugly aunt, and literally every single other character
in the film, save for the guitarist of a local band who tries to woo
her by scaring the crap out of her and making fun of her name.
Romay's got a whole heap of problems going on due to that old giallo
staple of being severely traumatised as a kid. This time, she
witnessed her father dying right in front of her, appearing with a
huge gash on his head, and despite of this she still asks "Daddy,
what's wrong?". His blood dripping on her legs has caused her
to lose the power of walking, given her horrific nightmares, and
pretty much driven her completely crazy.
I can see why the stepsister and aunt are a bit tetchy due to all
the screaming and crying that Lina is doing, but to be fair it was
their fault, as they murdered her father in order to get his
inheritance, only to find that he'd left it all to Lina. Now all they
can do is get drunk and cackle like hags while mocking her, as does
Lina's Uncle Enrico, Enrico actually asks why the sisters haven't
just bumped Lina off yet and is so drunk he offers to do it himself.
That's when things get a bit strange...
You see, Lina's often staring into space, thinking about her dad and
what not, but when her dad himself appears to her, all bloody and
zombie like, things have gone next level weird. Her dad, with blood
dripping down his face, gasping her name, says that Lina can walk,
and tells her to go get vengeance on the people that killed him. So
it turns out Lina can walk, but only if mentally, she returns to the
age she was when her dad was killed. One stabbed up Enrico later, and
the sisters start to get edgy. Who killed Enrico? They suspect Lina,
but she can't walk...right? Enter Doctor Orgaf (Ricardo Palacios,
from a shitload of films, including THE
PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK and RUN,
MAN, RUN). Orgaf seems to know a lot more than he's letting
on, and may have even more sinister intentions than the sisters.
Somehow, the cheaper and lesser a Jess Franco film is, the more I
like it, and I didn't mind this one that much. Maybe it's because
Lina Romay's character is surrounded by horrible human beings who see
her as an annoyance, and I was anticipating them getting their just
desserts, or maybe it was because of Lina being wheeled around in a
child's pram (!) rather than a wheelchair. The Gibraltar setting was
quite nice too, even though it reinforced my thoughts that there
doesn't seem to be much to do there except get robbed for food by a monkey.
Now this is going to be hard to believe, but not once does Lina
Romay get naked in this film. Not once. A Jess Franco film without
Lina Romay's pubes is like buying a Big Mac and only getting the box.
Maybe she wanted to show off her acting talents by spending an entire
film crying and lying in bed, staring at stuff. I did get a few
laughs from her returning from her childlike murder states and
immediately losing the power of her legs.
I know nothing of the Jess Franco fan community so I don't know how
they rate this one, but it was okay. A few murders, some cheesy
acting. Loads of zooms.
American
Rickshaw a.k.a. American
Tiger (1989, Italy, Action/Horror, Director: Sergio Martino)
Notable
actors: Daniel Greene! Donald Pleasence!
Not notable
actors: Mitchell Gaylord. Victoria Prouty.
Ouch!
Even the usually dependable Sergio Martino can't escape the curse of
late Eighties Italian horror. Sure, the film looks good, but the plot
makes about as much sense as any of Fulci's stuff made around the
same time, with two leading actors who seem to have wandered in from
an Umberto Lenzi movie like NIGHTMARE
BEACH or HITCHER
IN THE DARK. That said, there are plenty of unintentional
laughs to be had in the last half hour, if you can get through a full
hour of Daniel Greene chasing after a guy over and over and over again.
The plot involves Scott Edwards, brainy graduate who inexplicably
pulls people around Miami in a Rickshaw. Scott's going nowhere in
life (kind of like the plot for a good while), but he's a kindly
sort, taking care of an old Chinese lady one day, who gives him a
mysterious locket he immediately forgets about. She also gives him a
note, but he drops it and rats eat it, meaning that it takes a long
time for him to guess what's going on, long after the audience has.
One night, he gives a rickshaw ride to a young stripper lady who
offers to provide him some nooky in exchange for the ride, on her
fancy yacht no less. Scott's pinching himself with glee but once they
get started, and brace yourself here, the old lady who is somehow
remotely watching psychically sends her cat over to screech and
reveal that there's a guy in the toilet filming Scott and the stripper!
Scott's enraged at this despite behind offered one hundred bucks for
a free shag and decides to fight with the guy instead, which results
in a key going flying out of a window and Scott retrieving the wrong
video tape. These two items and their location eat up a lot of time
in this film, as do the cops trying to figure out what's going on
(you and me both). When Scott returns to the yacht to get the real
video cassette, he finds the porno maker murdered and the tape
missing and unbeknownst to him, murderer Daniel Greene watching him
from his car. At this point the 'helpful' old lady sets fire to the
boat with her mind, while Scott is in it! You're just making things
worse dear, go far a nap or something.
Rather than go on with the plot, which involves Scott running away
from Daniel Greene while Daniel Greene kills some of the cast and
uses the stripper to get at Scott, it's better just to skip to when
Donald Pleasence gets more involved, because that's where most of the
funny bits comes from. He's the principal bad guy of the film, and
I'm guessing Sergio Martino gave up making something good and just
elected to try and think of ridiculous things for Donald Pleasence to
do, like wearing a bad wig while his face is painted red or green or
fighting the world's fakest looking cat. Mind you, nothing tops the
end though, where Donald tries to make a speech while at the same
time oinking like a pig. You've got to give him credit for keeping a
straight face doing that. Him and every single other person in that scene.
Full of bollocks about Chinese folklore and astronomy, people
returning to the same location over and over again, Daniel Greene
appearing to be the only actor who seems to care about the film, some
gore, and two lead actors so crap I would have trouble picking them
out of a police line-up even though I just watched the film last
night, AMERICAN RICKSHAW is a low point for Sergio Martino, he
even fails to make it stupid enough to become a legendary bad movie
like ZOMBI 3 or TROLL
2. He does carry on the tradition of terrible dummies in
Italian films by having a truck run down a mannequin that looked like
they'd nicked it from a window display.
The Angel of The Night (1974, Brazil, Horror, Director: Walter Hugo Khouri)
This
was one of those films I found on YouTube and decided to watch
without knowing anything about it, and I swear when the opening
credits started I thought I was going to be watching something made
in the nineteen-forties. However, the first shot of actual footage we
see is of a girl in bell-bottoms. The IMDB states this film was made
in colour, but the version I watched was black and white, and was so
blurry it was almost like it was made using old security cameras.
The film itself involves a student named Ana being drafted in to
watch some rich people's children while they are away at some
conference or other, and although that's quite a hackneyed set-up
right there, the filmmakers go that extra distance in making every
single character Ana meets be as weird and/or odd as possible. First
off are the kids themselves - the daughter is very quiet and likes to
stare, while the son is chirpy and happy enough, but in a rather fake
fashion (as in he's smiling at Ana, but his eyes aren't). The mother
is very cold and standoffish, whereas the father sits in a room
listening to wonky classical music (that may have just been the
terrible copy I watched) while he just looks at Ana.
Worst of all is the groundskeeper, who does seem at least
superficially to be kind towards Ana, but when she not around him he
does an awful lot of staring into space. I suppose I kind of do the
same when I get five minutes peace but that's because I have two
children, one of whom plays Call of Duty with his headphones on,
screaming at the top of his voice, and the other relaying
incomprehensible anecdotes about things that happen on a thing called
Tik Tok. Then my wife shows up going on about such things as this
bill and that appointment, oblivious to the fact that I'm trying to
watch WHEN
WOMEN HAD TAILS or WHEN
WOMEN LOST THEIR TAILS or WHEN
MEN CARRIED CLUBS AND WOMEN PLAYED DING DONG. I mean the
groundskeeper does mention having a wife and kids so no wonder he
looks so bewildered and lost. He was probably just trying to watch
the news when the constant noise and endless screaming drove him from
his house.
Despite not doing too bad in the babysitting stakes, things start to
get creepy when someone starts phoning Ana and telling her she'll be
dead by the end of the night. With no one to turn to but strange
people, Ana's not got much to do except panic like hell, but who is
the mystery person on the 'phone?
Nail-biting, riveting, and shit-yer-pants scary are...not words I'm
going to use to describe this film. It's not bad though, and it gets
rather bleak and horrible towards the end. There's no gore or nudity,
but a certain grim tone throughout. It's a short film too, which is
always good when you're in a hurry or have a family to look after.
The
Angels From 2000 (1969, Italy,
Crime/Drama, Director: Lino Ranieri)
Notable
actors: Franco Citti and that blonde guy who looks like a ferret who
is always one of the bad guys in Spaghetti Westerns.
This
is a rare one! Thanks for uploading it onto Youtube, mysterious
stranger, and just ignore those indignant comments from that angry
guy claiming you stole it from his private collection. Not sure why
he's so up in arms - the film isn't much good anyway.
What is labelled a giallo on the IMDB is in fact yet another one of
those Italian films which documents the bored youth of the time
getting their kicks from drugs, sex, parties and petty crime, just
like SAN BABILA
- 8 P.M., THE BOYS WHO SLAUGHTER,
THE KIDS OF VIOLENT ROME
and that one where that guy shags a pinball machine (THE KIDS OF
VIOLENT ROME). This time around though, things are wrapped with a
nice trippy bow, seeing as how this is the sixties and not the
nihilistic seventies.
There's also one hedonistic character here who is trying to escape
his past. His name is Marco and he likes to deal drugs and steal
stuff as part of an organised gang, but deep down the drugs are there
to cover the horror and guilt he feels for getting his teenage love
killed in a stupid accident, something that still haunts him whenever
the drugs wear off or he sits down for five minutes. Redemption may
be on the horizon in the form of a young neighbour girl (who randomly
falls down a flight of stairs for no good reason in an
unintentionally funny bit), but do you expect a happy ending? Not if
you've read the plot description on the IMDB, which gives away the
whole plot. Thanks for that, whoever uploaded that.
Expect mumbly navel-gazing monologues, freak-out sequences as
everyone takes acid, the odd nude scene and young, smug guys
terrorizing young women, arguments between lovers and parents and
children, a whole lot of flashbacks and a downbeat ending.
It's kind of miserable, really. I suppose visually it was okay -
plenty of famous Roman locations and psychedelic stuff going on - I'm
not sure if it was the quality of the print or intentional that the
colours were washed out for the non-drug stuff.
It's also subsequently been removed from YouTube by the looks of
things. You're not missing much.
Assassination
on the Tiber (1979, Italy,
Eurocrime/Giallo, Director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Marino Mase! Massimo Vanni! Enzo Adronico! Bombolo!
Nico
Giraldi's sixth (!) outing takes a giallo form when a leading
industrialist type guy is stabbed in the back when the lights go out
during a meeting. Who killed the guy and why? Everyone attending is a
suspect, but an old man who was seen arguing with him prior to the
meeting is arrested as the prime suspect.
Giraldi knows the guy who's been arrested and doesn't think he's
responsible, so he starts investigating all those who were in
attendance at the meeting, while also playing special attention to
the dead guy's attractive wife, whom he hits on merely three days
after the murder of her husband. Giraldi also gets to get it on and
possibly marry the prime suspect's daughter, but does he ever track
down the killer?
You know these Inspector Giraldi films are merely an excuse for
Tomas Milian to ham it up for laughs, right? The fairly standard
giallo plot (dead person, loads of red herrings, killer bumping off
witnesses) is just background noise for Milian to dress up in crazy
outfits, swear an awful lot, hit on women and do a bit of crazy slapstick.
At first I thought this one was a bit mild in these stakes until
Milian started chasing a suspect on horseback and the film turned
into a Western, with the horse remaining as a character for the rest
of the film and even ending up living with Milian (no mouse called
Serpico this time around). The highlight of the film for me was when
Milian has to get to one of the suspects, but in order to do so
enters a singing contest, which does with a cheeseball disco song
with drag artist backing singers. Be warned, however. I sent the link
of this scene to Fred and 'highlight' was definitely not included in
his expletive ridden response, so be warned. ("Lowlight"
was more like it, douche
nozzle! - Fred)
These are Milian's films all the way mind you, so if you like to see
him mouthing off to his superiors and acting like a horny fanny rat,
there's eleven of these Giraldi films just waiting for you. I read
that these films were so successful, the audiences would cheer when
he would mouth off to his boss, so at least we know that Italian
audiences are very easy to please.
At
The Edge of the City (1953,
Italy, Eurocrime/Drama, Director: Carlo Lizzani)
Notable
actors: Giulietta Masina!
Carlo
Lizzani's AT THE EDGE OF THE CITY is nominally a noir-ish
murder mystery, but as usual there's hidden layers that reveal
themselves throughout the film that involve themes of middle class
ignorance of the poor and the desperation of the underclass to keep
their head above water, which results in a pretty good, almost
touching film.
Mario Ilari has been accused of murdering a woman called Marcella
but insists he's innocent. She was his lover in the past but claims
he broke off the relationship after his girlfriend Gina (Giulietta
Masina) tried to kill herself. If that's the case, why was Mario
spotted with Marcella on the night of her death, and why was his
knife used in the murder? A middle class lawyer with a snobby, icy
girlfriend takes on the case, with the help of his typist, an
educated girl from the same slums as Mario.
Roberto, the lawyer, meets Mario and tries to persuade him that
claiming that constant harassment led to him murdering Marcello,
saying that this might get the charges reduced to manslaughter. Mario
insists he's innocent but his distrust of everyone and reticence to
discuss what happened that night just makes him look more guilty.
Luisa the typist believes his story and along with Robert, they start
a little investigating of their own to try and weed out the real
killer. Roberto, however, isn't very good with dealing with working
class people.
Roberto and Luisa track down many witnesses and discover that a lot
of lies have been told to place Mario at the scene of the murder, but
obstacles stand in the way. One is a group of people who are
determined to make a certain person Mario claims to have met
seemingly not exist, and the other is Roberto's complete ignorance of
how to handle people he perceives to be beneath him (although his
intentions are good). He also doesn't realised that Luisa is in love
with him, preferring to hang about with his snobby girlfriend who
sees the underclasses as an irritant.
As usual with a Carlo Lizzani film, the tone is deadly serious, but
the subtleties are...subtle. The glimpse into how the homeless live,
and those in the slums, is fascinating, as they have a social system
far more honest than those of the middle class lawyers, who will use
any method to undermine each other. Also, how can a lawyer defend a
client that he believes is guilty in the first place? There might be
the odd dull patch here and there (like the sub-plot about Luisa
being in love with Roberto) but overall the shanty town setting and
mystery win through.
For reasons unknown, Carlo Lizzani killed himself at the age of 91
by jumping from the balcony of his apartment in Rome, which is
coincidentally on the same street Dario Argento's Profondo Rosso
store is located.
The
Barbarians a.k.a. The Barbarian
Brothers (1987, Italy, Fantasy, Director: Ruggero Deodato)
Notable
actors: David Paul! Peter Paul! Richard Lynch! Virgina Bryant! Eva La
Rue, according to folks who have watched CSI
Miami! Michael Berryman! George "Let's
never forget that despite all the bile I spew about the Italian film
industry being garbage, I did actually write and direct Dog
Lay Afternoon which is about a girl
shagging a dog" Eastman! Giovanni Cianfriglia! Nello Pazzafini!
With
the cheese levels set to Gorgonzola, THE BARBARIANS starts
out the way it means to go on - as a full on goofball adventure with
some gore thrown in, some fine overacting from Richard Lynch, and two
leads so obnoxious, dumb and loveable, you'd have to be insane to
think all this was intended to be serious. And despite the majority
of people getting it and signing up for the ride, others do seem to
think this is all unintentional. It's has the tone of an episode of XENA
or HERCULES,
so if you go in expecting that, you'll be fine.
Faraway in CONAN-rip
off land, some narrator goes on about some tribe that end up being
travelling entertainers who have some magical ruby with them, but
let's face it - it's a load of old bollocks. What we have is a bunch
of circus performers in wagons being chased by evil warlord Richard
Lynch's cronies, which leads to a fairly good, gory battle where the
circus folk hold their own (using the tools of their trade) before
inevitably failing miserably. Among the circus is Queen Canary
(Virginia Bryant, whom you won't remember from DEMONS
3: THE OGRE because like everyone else, you fell asleep
about five minutes into that crapfest), and three kids, twins Gore
and Kutchek, and a girl called Kadia or something. Queen Canary has
already hidden the ruby Lynch desires, but offers her submission to
Lynch if he'll spare the kids.
Lynch says they won't die by his hand or any of his cronies, which
is a fairly loaded statement to make. For Canary it's all she's
getting though - so while she thrown into a cage, the twins are
separated, each told the other died, then trained for years on end by
an hysterical, screaming Michael Berryman for a showdown in many
years time, when the both of them have transformed into what only be
described as a fairly loud hair-metal hybrid of CONAN
THE BARBARIAN and The Three Stooges (only, you know, there's
just two of them).
The two twins recognise each other and rather than kill each other,
they scream in each other's faces a bit, and escape. They also hook
up with thief Eva La Rue and try and lead the tribe of circus folk
back to glory. While one of them honks like some sort of hog and both
of them immediately forget what they're supposed to be doing every
time a naked woman appears before them. As if having two hollering,
dumbass, sweaty-arse crack goofballs descending on him isn't bad
enough, Lynch also has to contend with his cronies getting annoyed at
him falling in love with Queen Canary, and planning a little
rebellion of their own.
That's the plot right there, give or take, but we all know it's the
stupidity levels and set pieces that make the film, so watch out for
one of the twins getting involved in an arm-wrestling match with
George Eastman, the twins having a goof around with a head they've
just torn off some monster, and the twins taking on what's supposed
to be a dragon, but what really looks like the long-term unemployed,
bitterly depressed brother of that giant turtle from THE
NEVERENDING STORY.
He may have been the perennial bad guy, but I kind of miss Richard
Lynch in these roles. In spite of his racially offensive throne that
puts Xerxes' staircase from 300 to
shame, he plays the bad guy like a kind of mixed up, misguided tyrant
who can't quite go the whole way in being evil, but can't quite
redeem himself either. It lends the film a certain depth that somehow
we don't get from two goons flapping about hooting and slagging each
other off. Not that I'm knocking the twins - it's this half-arsed
approach to seriousness that makes the film so enjoyable.
So in the end, Deodato, in not trying to be serious, delivers a CONAN
rip-off that's rather enjoyable, and certainly not meant to be taken
as a piece to be academically analysed (just like LIVE
LIKE A COP, DIE LIKE A MAN, which always seemed to be a
piss-take of the Eurocrime genre).
The
Beautiful Summer a.k.a. A
Summer To Remember (1974, Italy, Drama, Director: Sergio Martino)
Notable
actors: Senta Berger! John Richardson! Lino Toffolo! Carla Mancini
(as either a maid or a nurse, I wasn't sure)!
Young
Gianluca is suspicious of his mother's motives when she moves both
of them from Milan to some seaside town for an undetermined amount of
time. She claims it's too cold back in Milan, but Gianluca wants to
see his father, a high-flying businessman with a sideline in
dangerous race car driving. Why won't Gianluca's mother take him back
to his father, who until recently was taking part in the very
hazardous sport of high-speed racing in flimsy vehicles. Why? Could
it be he's just working in America? That's what Gianluca goes for in
the meantime.
Ignoring the obvious suitor hanging around the villa of Gianluca's
widowed I mean holidaying mother, Gianluca embarks on a
soul-searching quest to find himself in a strange land, frequently
lapsing into flashbacks where he and his father (John Richardson,
from other tearjerker ANNA:
THE PASSION,
THE TORMENT), rolling about grass, laughing, swinging each
other about on beaches, and chasing each other through pigeon filled
piazzas. In the real world, he acts up to Senta Berger and 'Uncle'
Mario Erpichini (who gets a rather notable death in Enzo Castellari's HIGH
CRIME). He also has a kind of early girlfriend in the shape
of Olga, a neighbour who suggests that Gianluca's parent may be going
through a divorce.
Socially, it turns out that being driven to your new school by a
chauffeur isn't the best idea, as Gianluca becomes a target for
bullies. A local boy, Marco, takes umbrage at the presence of a
millionaire's son, but when Gianluca doesn't grass him in for a
beating that's given out, the two embark on a bromance where they try
and finance a trip for Gianluca to go to Milan to find his father.
This also involves a local crazy person known as the Red Baron who
lives on the beach and gives lectures about dog fights he's been
involved in. Most notable of all (for those who haven't read the
wikipedia page for this film) is that his personal theme tune is also
the theme tune to the popular US comedy CURB
YOUR ENTHUSIASM, a show I have never watched but am
nonetheless aware of due to the overuse of the theme tune in memes on YouTube.
As far as I'm aware, this kind of film is well known in Italy, so
you can expect a set up in the first third of the film, some comedy
in the middle, and some horrific tragedy in the last third, and that
is what happens here. I was curious to watch this one as I'm always
curious to see how these genre directors handle films outwith the
parameters within which we know them for, and safe to say that
Martino carries this one off perfectly. It's not my type of film at
all, but Martino films it's beautifully, filling the screen with
strange angles and plenty of primary colours, mixing that with some
expert editing when Gianluca lapses into his flashbacks with his dad.
The tearjerking part is also well executed, with Gianluca's friends
standing out in the rain, anxiously watching a hospital window. Good soundtrack
too, although I doubt many people are going to want to track this
down, or even want to read this review. The stuttering pimp from
Dario Argent's BIRD
WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE shows up here as a fence. His name
is Gildo Di Marco, and I was going to call him Italy's Marty Feldman,
when I realised that Mary Feldman was Italy's Marty Feldman, having
starred in Sergio Martino's SEX
WITH A SMILE. Full circle!
Behold
Man - The Survivors (1969, Italy,
Sci-fi, Director: Bruno Gaburro)
Notable
actors: Philippe Leroy! Irene Papas! Frank Wolff! Gabriele Tinti!
It's
an early Italian post-apocalyptic film! Still, don't expect a
cigar-chomping Fred Williamson to be sass-talking anyone or hope that
George Eastman is going to be appear in leather to bum-rape Giancarlo
Prete, because this is serious drama post-apocalyptic stuff. With
only five characters. Set almost entirely on beach. Luckily, we have
a bunch of actors that are a joy to watch, so the film's pace is
rather quick, considering.
A nuclear war has ravaged the Earth, and family man Philippe Leroy
keep his hot wife Irene Papas and serious, introspective son Patrick
well away from the irradiated cities. Instead, they live in a caravan
on a beach, where Philippe goes out out fishing every day, despite
have had his hands destroyed when the bombs dropped. This perhaps is
maybe why he's not so interested physically in Irene, which is going
to work out bad for when out of the blue Gabriele Tinti and Frank
Wolff turn up.
Irene doesn't even try to hide her desire when she and Tinti start
making eyes at each other (Wolff tries it on too, but fails, badly).
A strange dynamic falls on the group as Irene learns that those
destroyed, poisonous cities Philippe has been telling her about are
clean, and Philippe seems to understand that Irene is about to dump
him for Tinti, so tries stirring things up between Wolff and Tinti,
while Wolf and Philippe clash as Wolff wants to rebuild society,
whereas Philippe thinks what remains of the human race should just
shrivel up and die. The kid, for the most part, gets almost
completely forgotten about, and I'm sure that was intentional, as is
the general misanthropic tone of the film.
Also adding to the air of nihilism and isolation is Ennio
Morricone's often minimalist soundtrack, with Western twangs mixed
with percussion, lone flutes, and wailing voices (most prominent when
Irene Papas and Gabriele Tinti are doing a bit of skinny dipping, so
you get to see Irene's Papas). The constant shots of empty landscapes
and the sea further add to the general atmosphere of the film being
'not full of jolly japes'.
Acting wise, you can't go wrong with any of the actors here. Wolff
is eccentric and moody, where Leroy is just plain moody. When he
first sees that there are new people in his life, he seems to know
instantly that he's lost everything, and does well to convey that
despair. It's Irene Papas that steals the show for me though,
probably because she's given the most to do - acting bored, lustful,
and at times, completely insane at the situation.
I'd been after this one for years and it turned up on Youtube a
month ago. That doesn't mean it will still be there by the time you
read this review, mind you.
Bizarre
(1987, Italy, Giallo, Director: Giuliana Gamba)
Notable
actors: Florence Guerin! Luciano Bartoli! Robert Egon (not that he's
that notable)!
I
notice there are currently fifty-three plot keywords on the IMDB
page for this film. Who are the people who have the time to do this?
This is one them erotic very late era gialli that have the plot of a
late-sixties giallo, but with a whole lot more sex thrown in there
for good measure. It's all about the mind games again, this time with
a really small cast and two people who are really messed up in the
head. However, the plot of this film gets rather ridiculous in
places, so it was good for a laugh.
Florence isn't really enjoying her marriage to Luciano any more.
There's just something about pretending to be a prostitute in a hotel
and having him stick a gun barrel in her proud mary and play Russian
roulette while he held a pillow over her face that she just didn't
like, so now she's hitting the road and Luciano can go find someone
else to mess around with. Except that leaving him isn't going to be
so easy both in the real world and the world in Florence's head.
She does get over it quick enough when after a few days of hanging
around a hotel, she hooks up with a sexy gentleman (Stefano Sabelli
from DINNER WITH
A VAMPIRE and MEAN TRICKS).
You've got to love the way Stefano approaches the situation - he
gives it the old 'hey baby, you look hot' routine, tells her he's
been watching her for days, follows her to the bar, offers her a
cigarette and starts stroking her thigh. Just look back on that
sentence and imagine a guy trying that these days. I'm not even sure
that would have worked back in the Eighties, but in this film, it
does! Even better is when Stefano turns out to be a plant just so
Luciano can watch them get it on from a cupboard! Oh, that Luciano.
Florence runs off to a huge villa by the beach and because of past
experience is not rather wary of men, especially sexy young
groundskeeper Robert Egon (Willy the Nazi from SODOMA'S
GHOST, Willy the Nazi from A
CAT IN THE BRAIN, and MY
OWN PRIVATE IDAHO [eh?]). Florence gives Robert the brush
for at least a few minutes before the two of them fall in love, which
means we're treated to a 'love montage' as they drive around the
beach, run about laughing, and make sweet sweet love on the beach.
Didn't you listen to Anakin Skywalker? That sand gets everywhere -
and by that he means up your arse crack!
Speaking of arse crack, I hope you like Robert Egon's arse because
it should really have it's on separate screen credit, the amount of
time it appears in this film. You see, there are really two Lucianos
in this film. There's the real one that's messing with Florence's
head, and then there's the one in Florence's head that keeps telling
her that her relationship with Robert isn't filthy enough and that
she needs to dirty things up a bit, which leads Florence to jamming a
hairbrush up Robert's arse without warning, or, indeed, any kind of
lubrication. Robert, to put it mildly, is not pleased.
We all know however that when young lovers fall out there's always
the joy of make-up sex, and I'm sure we've all shook up cans of full
sugar coke and poured them all over each other before making even
more sweet sweet love to someone's big toe, the most sensitive part
of a person's body. And this film is in no way finished with being
stupid yet, because Florence and Robert (mainly Florence) decide to
gender swap to get back at Luciano, which means Robert Egon has to
dress in drag and perv himself up in an apartment across the road
from Luciano's office, although it's more funny earlier than, as a
test, Florence arranges for Robert to meet all his friends in a bar.
Somehow they don't notice that he's there, even though he looks
exactly the same, only with lipstick on.
I'm leaving out Luciano's side of things and the out of nowhere plot
twist at the end. For a film that sets out to be sleazy and
psychological, there's a fair dollop of cheese on top by way of
Florence and Robert's flirting and the saxophone-led soundtrack. The
stupidity of the situations onscreen is enough to carry the film
through. Not that it's any good, but worth a few laughs. Just don't
watch it with the missus or she might come at you with a hairbrush.
Black
Journal a.k.a. Great Boiled
(well, that's the literal translation of the Italian title Gran
Bollito, but who knows?) (1977, Italy, Horror, Director: Mauro Bolognini)
Notable
actors: Shelley Winters! Max Von Sydow! Renato Pozzetto! Antonio
Marsina! Laura Antonelli! Adriana Asti! Mario Scaccia! Alberto Lionello!
Well,
they sure don't make them like this anymore. Shelley Winters plays a
Sicilian woman who moves to mainland Italy with her son and takes up
residence in an apartment block, quickly making friends with three
spinsters and caring for her husband, who unfortunately has a stroke
on their first day there and becomes paralysed. Sounds like a pretty
solid drama, eh? Like one of those 'painful lives' books that are
inexplicably popular.
It would be, if Winters wasn't an overprotective psychopath and her
son wasn't a fully grown Antonio Marsina, the only survivor of
thirteen children whom Winters believes she has stolen from death.
Plus, the three sisters are all played by perfectly by men, for no
reason I can discern, and all three do their job perfectly,
especially Max Von Sydow, who revels in the role of sensitve, caring
Lisa, whose fretful nature jars with Sydow's huge figure. Lisa, by
the way, is also haunted by nightmares of being raped by the Devil.
You also have Stella, the melancholy lady who has been unlucky in
love and years to return to the US to seek out her ex-husband, and
Berta, a sarcastic singer. All three bond with Winters pretty
quickly, which is good for her as they know the gossip on everyone,
including that pretty dancer who has been sniffing around Marsina.
Winters is one of those mothers who thinks there is no woman out
there that's good enough for her son, and she's also getting a bit
cagey about the upcoming war that Marsina is possibly going to get
called up for. Thinking Death is now going to get what is rightfully
his, Winters starts to panic, then flat out goes nuts when she
catches Marsina in bed with Laura Antonelli (from the horrible BALI
and the obscure giallo LA GABBIA
which I have yet to track down). Like any right-thinking person,
Winters thinks that she can control the situation by flat out
murdering those spinsters as some sort of sacrifice to Death. Roping
in her mentally handicapped servant (Milena Vukotic from THE
HOUSE OF
THE YELLOW CARPET, who is great here), Winters first selects
Stella (as she is leaving the country), cuts her head off, and turns
her flesh into soap and her bones into powder that she then makes
into biscuits and feeds to everyone.
The absurdity of the film is played up for laughs, and it gets
really absurd and sick, as Winters tries to lure Marsina away from
Antonelli by sending in her totally naked, handicapped servant into
Marsina's room to seduce him (he's too much of a good guy though),
and also dries a fully naked Marsina off after he's had a bath.
There's some slight gore here and there too - blood splatters,
boiling flesh, but this is really a comedy of the blackest kind. It
reminded me strongly of the British comedy THE
LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, with the cast playing characters of
both genders (I meant to say that all three spinsters return as male
characters as the film goes on), and having a similar domestic horror
feel about it. LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN co-writer Mark Gatiss is a
fan of Italian cinema, even covering it in his documentary about
Horror Films (HORROR
EUROPA WITH MARK GATISS - 2012), so it could be he caught
this film at some point.
It's a delight to watch Max Von Sydow in this one, but Shelley
Winters completely steals the show as Lea, the crazy mother. She's
not a raving lunatic, she's just a disturbed individual following
some kind of internal logic that only she understands, and the way
she matter-of-factly prepares rooms for murder and cleans up
afterwards is brilliant. She truly does love her son and will do
anything to protect him, even if it means killing (and not just the
spinsters either).
Sometimes you hear about a film and hope it's as crazy as it sounds,
and this one is. It might be too talky for some, but not for me.
Blazing
Flowers a.k.a. Milan...Defend
or Die! (1978, Italy, Eurocrime, Director; Gianni Martucci)
Notable
actors: Marc Porel! George Hilton! Al Cliver! Barbara Magnolfi! Anna
Maria Rizzoli! Guido Leontini! Mario Novelli! Nino Vingelli! The big
fat guy from Tentacles and Strip
Nude For Your Killer!
Man,
this was hard to track down. Luckily, it's not that bad a film. Not
the best either, though.
Marc Porel, in non-acting mode, is released from prison following
being jailed for six years as a getaway driver in an armed robbery.
The prison warden reckons that Marc is one of life's good guys, so he
arranges for him to go to Milan, where he will work for his uncle
(Nino Vingelli, from the utterly tongue-tying film SPIACCICHICCICATICELO (Congratulations
Steven, there's
a first time for everything. I was unable to find a
single
image for this film!!! - Fred.) and quite a few Mario
Merola films). His uncle is a kindly sort with two lovely daughters,
innocent Barabara Magnolfi (who fancies Marc and parades in front of
a mirror naked) and Anna Maria Rizzoli, who has been forced into
prostitution by evil Don Cicio (Guido Leontini, from loads of
Eurocrime films like THE WARNING
and THE MAFIA TRIANGLE,
which is also a Mario Merola film). Guido Leontini looks less like an
Italian and more like the kind of long-term unemployed guys found
propping up bars throughout my home town in Scotland.
Marc discovers that his cousin Anna Maria is a prostitute in the
worst way possible - by finding that out after he's shagged her,
courtesy of his uncle. His uncle is oblivious to this and only wanted
Marc to blow off some steam after being in jail for so long, so he
gave him some money to go to the local brothel. Turns out that Marc
was in love with her as a teenager and now he's got to go back to
crime to get her free, by working for Don Cicio and his suave
sidekick, Al Cliver, in a rare 'no facial hair' appearance. I also
found out recently he's released a biography, which more people
involved in Italian genres films should do.
Watching this from a car and sometimes from his office is cop George
Hilton. He's been after Don Cicio for ages, and as Marc's parole
officer he thinks that Marc will sink back into crime and give him a
way in to finally capturing Don Cicio. Meanwhile, Marc, via ex-jail
friend Nosey, signs up to do some work for Don Cicio in exchange for
Anna Maria, but can he trust a violent criminal? And will George
finally bag his man, seeing as how the script only allows him to do
anything interesting at all with only fifteen minutes of the film to go?
Apart from all the inter-cousin action, quality funky music and
overload of female nudity, this film takes ages to get violent,
coasting along on punch-ups and robberies before shots are fired.
This isn't too much of a bad thing as the film has a habit of
distracting us with loads of naked women, from both female leads to
random strippers, Don Cicio's junky girlfriend, whose actions forward
the plot more than anyone else in the film, get naked a couple of
times and even Hilton has a hooker girlfriend who disrobes.
Gianni Martucci is a very strange director. Apart from a couple of
comedies, he directed the weird giallo TRHAUMA,
possibly the only giallo featuring Lego, and the just plain weird THE
RED MONKS. BLAZING FLOWERS may actually be his most
coherent film, even though Don Cicio and his minions don't seem to do
much crime apart from kidnap relatives of Marc Porel and try to
export heroin. It's not a bad film though, but there's not enough to
make it stand out from the pack and therefore is a film that should
be approached after having exhausted all the good Eurocrime films, of
which there are many.
Blood
and Bullets a.k.a. Cop's Blood
(1976, Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Alfonso Brescia)
Notable
actors: George Eastman! Jack Palance! Jenny Tamburi! Nello Pazzafini!
This
is definitely one of Alfonso Brescia's better films, and a solid
enough Eurocrime film. It ticks all the boxes with the gun battles,
car chases and naked babes anyway, even if the plot is a little thin.
Seven-foot-ten George Eastman must have asked Alfonso Brescia what
his character's motivation was in this film, and the answer must have
been 'your character smokes', because that's literally all you are
going to get there. He's a man bent on revenge as he's returned to
Philly to avenge the death of his cop father, who has been accused of
being corrupt and involved with the mob. Someone doesn't want George
to find out, as the moment he steps off the plane, which he was
having a nice relaxing smoke on, a bunch of pretend-terrorists open
fire on him, and just about anybody else that's around, resulting in
a nice opening shootout that's probably the best part of the film,
especially when George shoots a bad guy carrying explosives and the
guy explodes! The police are amazingly understanding about all this,
but they also know why George is back in Philly.
One other guy who knows is mobster friend Jack Palance (whom, I
realised, has a face like an armed robber who has worn panty hose on
his head so many times his face has just decided to remain squashed
looking forever). Jack at first guns down a couple of guys waiting to
ambush George, and seems to be helping out just because Palance was
mates with Eastman's dad, but he may have some other nefarious reason
for grinning like a freak while gunning down shitloads of mobsters.
The general storyline basically goes as follows - Eastman goes to a
certain location on a hunch or a tip, or to meet an informer, and
gets either ambushed or his informer gets murdered. He can't even
visit childhood sweetheart Jenny Tamburi (from SMILE
BEFORE DEATH, the giallo with the most irritating theme tune
ever, FRANKENSTEIN:
ITALIAN STYLE, and, as I am about to try and review, THE
EXORCIST: ITALIAN STYLE.
I'm horrified to discover that there's more than one 'Italian Style'
film out there) without getting into a punch-up. It's a case of wash,
rinse, repeat, but this time around Brescia does a good job of
keeping things fresh, like Eastman having a huge punch-up in a bar
that's intercut with a striptease, or having a shoot-out take place
in pitch darkness where only Eastman knows the layout of the room.
There's loads of action in this one, and the end battle is quite
epic. I can't even believe I'm saying these things about an Alfonso
Brescia film, but there you go. In those Mario Merola films things
were padded out with Merola's songs and Luciano Montaldo's screaming,
so I guess in this one Brescia had to make do with putting some
action in there. Neither Eastman or Palance are that great at acting,
but both are perfectly watchable here.
Oh, and the theme tune is a total rip-off of the theme from SHAFT.
Brescia wanted it that way!
Blood
Feud a.k.a. A Blood Event In The
Town of Siculiana Between Two Men Because Of A Widow. Political
Motives Are Suspected. Love-Death-Shimmy. Lugano Belle. Tarantelle.
Tarallucci And Wine. (1978, Italy, Drama, Director: Lina Wertmuller)
Notable
actors: Sofia Loren! Marcello Mastroianni! Giancarlo Giannini!
Just
like Claudia Cardinale in THE
DAY OF THE OWL, Sofia Loren plays a very angry widow (who
kind of looks like she wouldn't be out of place in an Eightie's Goth
band). Unlike Claudia Cardinale in that film, Loren knows exactly
what happened to her husband and who did it, because one night a
local thug Acicatena burst into her house and killed her husband with
a shotgun due to his involvement as a witness in a Mafioso trial.
Yet, no one will come forward as a witness and three years later, she
still hasn't found justice, instead, she's known as The Widow With
The Rifle, running around brandishing a gun and ranting.
Enter socialist Marcello Mastroianni, who has returned to Sicily to
live with his mother (their scenes together are pretty much the only
source of humour in the film). Since his father died, Marcello has
become a rich landowner, but his political leanings may get him into
trouble due to the rise of Mussolini and the fascists, of which the
murderous Acicatena has become leader of the local branch. It also
doesn't help that Marcello stops Acicatena from raping Loren after
she fails to kill him. Not put off by Marcello's disgusting long
beard, she makes love with him by way of gratitude.
It seems that out in those roasting hot Sicilian hills you can't
just start one love affair without another one starting up, because
complicating things are the arrival of cocky, rich gangster Giancarlo
Giannini, just returned from the US to do some smuggling business. He
was Loren's husband's cousin, and it could be that he's fixing to
take out Acicatena, but then again, he also falls in love with Loren,
who soon finds herself pregnant. Will she choose the chivalrous
Mastroianni or the passionate Giannini, who promises to take her away
to the US? Or it could just be that she'll choose both of them...
Well fleshed-out characters and top-tier acting (as expected from
the Italian acting royalty involved) make this a pretty good watch.
Sofia Loren's inexhaustible rage and inner turmoil carries the film
while both the introspective Mastroianni and the flamboyant, but
dangerous, Giannini support her well while their own strange
relationship develops (Mastroianni's rich father basically set the
course for Giannini's life by making his father, then himself, work
in a sulphur mine). All the while, Turi Ferro's Acicatena is a vile,
smug creature who thinks he's untouchable, which sets up a very tense
scene later when Giannini calls him out.
For some reason the scene where Mastroianni is having dinner with
his mother stands out. It has no real bearing on the film but when
his mother scolds him for getting sauce on his shirt and Mastroianni
counters this by pouring sauce all himself struck me as pretty funny.
Maybe that was needed because the film gets gradually darker and more
violent until the outstanding ending, which happens to be both very
violent and very touching.
Loren could sure act, eh? Check out TWO
WOMEN and YESTERDAY,
TODAY AND TOMORROW for further examples.
Also, the alternative title of this film is the longest in cinematic
history - it says so on Italian Wikipedia!
Blue
Tornado (1990, Italy, Sci-fi,
Director: Antonio Bido)
Notable
actors: Face from The A-Team! Patsy Kensit! David Warner! That guy
who got his face ripped off in After Death!
Should
be called Blue Waft of Fetid Air, more like. Filmed in lame-o
vision, what we have here is TOP GUN
mixed with CLOSE
ENCOUNTERS, all made as boring as possible by Antonio Bido.
Face from THE A-TEAM
plays Tom or Alex or something, a hot-shot pilot for NATO who, along
with his buddy Phil, love getting into chases with the enemy over
Italy. Phil has kids and a family while Face is a fanny rat, but Phil
also keeps going on about a mountain him and his dad used to climb,
while Face nods to pretend he's listening. On the ground, grumpy
David Warner is their CO, trying to keep these cheeky chappies in check.
One day, these fellas are flying towards said mountain when all
these balls of light appear and before you know it Phil's plane has
crashed and Face is getting dragged over the coals because the
military won't believe his story of UFOs. He's also got to bond with
Phil's old man and console Phil's kids, so how are we going to have
time for that tacked on romantic sub plot?
Luckily, while at the library looking for UFO books, he stumbles on
Patsy Kensit researching flying saucers (should have been researching
acting Pasy) and the two hit it off. Well, that's what they're trying
to convey I guess. The on-screen chemistry is as explosive as like
what happens when you add water to...water.
Most of the film features Face looking up at the things, arguing
with his bosses, and talking UFOs with Patsy, so it's no real
surprise to find out that this bore-fest takes forever to get back to
that mountain, and it's tepid as hell. Cheap looking too. His voice
kept annoying me as well. I guess David Warner needed some quick cash
for something, which is why he ended up in this.
I was going to say that Face was the first A-Team person to end up
in an Italian film, but now I've got a feeling that George Peppard
probably featured in some late sixties Italian war film (I can't be
bothered checking). And Mister T was no doubt in a giallo while
Murdoch probably just got bummed in some Joe D'Amato porno.
Bora
Bora (1968, Italy, Drama, Director:
Ugo Liberatore)
Notable
actors; Haydee Politoff!
Finally,
after all these years of watching Italian films, I've found the most
annoying and horrible character that ever found his way onto the
screen. Ugo Liberatore must have hated his intended audience, because
watching BORA BORA is like Ugo himself went around to your
house and shat on your toilet. Not in your toilet, mind you, but on
top of the cistern, leaving it on display for all to see. And he goes
even further than that with this one...
Roberto's wife has run off and left, and no fucking wonder. He's a
narcissistic dickhead for starters, and a contrary bastard too. He's
tracking down his wife, but at the same time he manages to try and
bed every woman he sees. Roberto's adventure starts in Tahiti, where
he stoats about acting like a total twat looking for his wife Marita
(Haydee Politoff). He finds her location from Swedish tourist Susanne
(but he can't understand why she would go to somewhere so backward).
He also tries to get it on with her, but she changes her mind, then
changes her mind again after Roberto slapping her about a bit turns
her on (more reasons to hate this film).
It turns out that Marita has gone off to somewhere called Bora Bora
and has remarried. What's the first thing Roberto does when he sets
eyes on Marita? He slaps the shit out of her, that's what. He also
around this time turns out to be a racist too, gets to the village
Marita's staying in before her, tells her husband that Marita slept
with him, then demands to drink coconut juice, has Marita's husband
fetch him one, drinks a little bit and then tosses the coconut away.
I'm really struggling to find some sort of point in this film, and it
just gets worse from here on in.
Upon seeing that Marita (and we'll get to her shortly) is happy and
content, Roberto decides that he's going to get married and live
there too, which results in him seducing a local girl and generally
hanging around the place while the locals build him a new house. And
he insults them when they're doing it too! It also starts becoming
evident that Marita isn't totally over Roberto and that they've been
playing sick mind games with each other since they were teenagers.
Ugo Liberatore then decides that Bora! Bora! Bora! isn't shit enough
and throws in a curveball that made me nearly kick in the television.
A bunch of natives drag a live turtle out of the ocean, smash its
head in with a hammer and proceed to cut it up while the poor thing
suffers horribly on a level exactly on a par with CANNIBAL
HOLOCAUST. Some of these films try to get away with this
shit by claiming it's documenting local customs and what not, but the
natives did this to give Roberto a turtle shell as a present. For
fuck's sake!
Worse still, and this is the equivalent of Ugo Libertore coming
round to your house, offering to make you a coffee, then rubbing his
foreskin around the rim of your cup in secret then giggling as you
drink it in front of him, Marita goes home with Roberto! I don't
usually spoil films, but this one offended me to my core. There's no
pay off! Roberto, through a serious of passive-aggressive and
outright aggressive actions, gets his way in the end, with no
retribution, as it seems that Marita had intended that to be the case
all along.
Reading over this review, I've made the film sound like things
actually happen in it, but not much does unless you like to watch a
smug arsehole manipulate people. BORA BORA was a Snore-ah
Snore-ah! This is a good candidate for worst Italian film ever, even
worse than EVIL CLUTCH
(at least they didn't kill any animals in that one) or WAR
OF THE ROBOTS.
The
Cat (1977, Italy, Comedy/Giallo, Director:
Luigi Comencini)
Notable
actors: Ugo Tognazzi! Mariangela Maleto! Philippe Leroy! Mario Brega!
Dalila Di Lazzaro!
This
is an excellent mix of comedy and giallo that balances both genres
nicely, thanks to some solid direction and good performances from the
two leads. Plus, just like Luigi Comencini's other giallo/comedy THE
SUNDAY WOMAN, there's a nice Ennio
Morricone soundtrack to round things off.
In Rome, two siblings (Ugo Tognazzi and Mariangela Maleto) are
landlords that own a huge apartment complex in the middle of Rome.
They are delighted because one of the tenants has just died, and that
means that they are one step closer to achieving their goal - once
all the tenants leave, or are evicted, or die, they can sell the
complex for 500 million lire so that property developer can build on
the site. They even keep a scoreboard on their wall and cross out the
name of the tenant once they are gone (Maleto hates one tenant so
much she crosses them off dozens of times). There's a couple of
problems this duo are facing, however...
One is that the siblings hate each other and find it hard to
sometimes occupy the same room. Maleto is a huge giallo fan and has
to often hide her crime books from Tognazzi, because when he finds
them he tears out the page that reveals the killer and eats it! The
two often also fight over food, which we see during a sequence where
they are spying on two men in a restaurant where one sibling keeps
stealing what they both perceive as being the larger of two
hamburgers from the other's plate when their back is turned. The
other problem is the tenants themselves, or mainly, the tenant's
rights they have that prevents them all from being thrown out into
the street.
Four paragraphs in and I haven't mentioned the cat yet - that'll
give you an indication of how much is packed into this film. The cat
belongs to the hate-filled siblings, and it's just as vindictive and
petty as the both of them. It's through the cat (and a nicely fluid
sequence) where we meet the remaining tenants of the building. As the
cat strolls from apartment to apartment (and driving everyone nuts),
we get to meet Philippe Leroy the priest, whom Maleto is trying to
seduce so Tognazzi can blackmail him with discreetly taken pictures),
Dalila Di Lazzaro, a secretary whom Tognazzi has the hots for who
seemingly transcribe telephone conversations for her corporate boss
every night, then there's the old age chamber music group, the
secretive chess teacher, and a journalist. There's a lot of people to
keep track of in this film.
The plot itself kicks off when the cat is murdered one night,
prompting the siblings to go the bumbling cops with the dead cat in a
bag and demand the police do an autopsy on the cat (!) and open up a
murder case. When the police refuse, the two of them start their own
investigations, and we get to see what the people in the apartment
complex are really up to as many secrets are revealed, the plot take
many sharp turns into different territories, and everything is neatly
tied up when they finally solve the cat's murder.
This film is absolutely brilliant from start to finish, jam-packed
with twists and reveals throughout it's duration. I'm not going to
reveal much here at all in order to be fair to the film, but expect
nudity, gunfights, drugs, actual laughs (sometimes Italian comedy
doesn't translate well into English - the references and analogies
get lost), and a performance so great from Mariangela Maleto that she
received some sort of reward for it. I actually burst out laughing
when Tognazzi slammed a car door on a corpse's hand in a panic.
Italian comedies are very hit and miss because sometimes the
slapstick is beyond silly, but not here.
Mario Brega's not in it much though, so fans of him might be let
down. This is yet another film I know of because of the soundtrack,
which at one point the entire cast enjoy themselves as part of the
plot! Highly recommended. Other giallo/comedy hybrids are NO
THANKS, COFFEE MAKES ME NERVOUS and the painful WHAT
EVER HAPPENED TO BABY TOTO?
Cats
(2019, Horror, UK/USA, Director: Tom Hooper)
Cringing
Actors: Ian McKellan, Judi Dench, Idris Elba, James Fucking Corden,
Rebel Wilson, Ray Winstone, Taylor Swift, etc, etc...
Well,
it's been reviewed to death, but I believe I'm owed some sort of
restitution due to the trauma, and some sort of catharsis from what
I've just witnessed, so here goes...
My kids thought it would be fun to hold me captive and make me watch
this one, but the joke was soon on them as I knew what I was getting
into, but then soon after that the joke was on all of us as a bunch
of CGI cats with actors faces floating on them jumped around the
screen, gibbering the word 'Jellicle' over and over and over again
for a full one hour forty-five minutes of hardcore cringe.
After the ordeal was over, I was straight on the internet to see if
there was some sort of plot I might have missed because we were all
screaming in pain so much, and to see if the stage musical was as bad
as the film. The stage version is definitely a lot gayer than the
cinematic version, but I'd much rather see loveable actor John
Partridge bouncing around stage belting out (or maybe miming) songs
than watch Rebel Wilson eat dancing cockroaches and flinging her legs asunder.
The plot involves a cat called Victoria getting dumped in an
alleyway where other dumped cats live (probably because they won't
stop fucking singing!) and Victoria being indoctrinated into their
weird cat cult, which involves saying Jellicle every three seconds or
so until the head cat (Judi Dench, who looks more like a lion) makes
the Jellicle Choice, which means (my keyboard actually stopped
working there - even it hates this film) - which means that they pick
whatever cat they think sung a song about themslves the best and fire
them off into the atmosphere in a balloon/chandelier combo to die. So
that means that an almost endless parades of cats appear, sing a song
about themselves, then get turned into dust by Idris Elba and
teleported to a barge on the Thames where Ray Winstone the singing
cockney cat awaits. Yes, Ray Winstone. I wondered aloud why he was in
the film. "Maybe he's developed dementia" my wife said.
Rebel Wilson turns up to sing about being a "Gumbie" cat,
Inexplicably popular James Fucking Corden turns up to sing his song,
"Obnoxious Fat Prick". "I'm an obnoxious fat prick/Yes
an obnoxious fat prick/Thank fuck I'm only in the film/For about five
minutes", Imagine being the poor guy who had to wash James
Fucking Corden's green screen suit after all that dancing. He's
probably dead now. Idris Elba continues his run of baffling career
choices including the almost equally terrible DARK
TOWER (if you've read the books) and the hideously bad last
season of the otherwise great LUTHER
by playing Macavity, who wants to be the cat they fire into the sky
after the Jellicle Choice, but Taylor Swift sings his song, called
"Let's Just Say Macavity A Whole Bunch of Times". Which is
similar to the song "Let's Say The Name Mephistophiles A Bunch
Of Times" which appears later in the film.
My son was running around singing "I'm a genital cat/A genital
cat" after this film and its taken a full hour of Fortnite to
help him forget it. Other lyrics we came up with were "Everybody
Buggers Rum Tum Tugger", and "It's been such a wonderful
Jellicle night/Now I'm off for a Jellicle shite". I see some
positive reviews on the IMDB state that folks that don't like it just
don't like musicals, but that's bollocks, because I love JESUS
CHRIST SUPERSTAR. I can sing "What then to do with this
Jesus of Nazareth" EXACTLY the way the guy sings it in the film. CATS
has none of the camp value that the stage version has, none of the
energy either. It seems that in the stage version the performers just
play up the ridiculous nature of the plot, but it just comes across
as really fake and false in the film version, with next to nothing to
pin anything emotional on. It's pretty hard to feel anything when the
most famous song, Memories, is sung by a CGI cat with a human face
with snot running down it.
There's good bad, and there bad bad, and CATS is bad bad. Be
warned - it's a cinematic version of Tartarus for bad movie fans.
The
Ceremony Of The Senses (1979,
Italy, listed on the IMDb as Crime/Drama even though it's nothing of
the sort, Director: Antonio D'Agostino)
Notable
actors: None...strangely.
Before
going on to direct a shitload of porn films, director Antonio
D'Agostino tried his hand at the last Seventies fad of making a film
about Jesus in modern times (like WHITE
POP JESUS and POOR CHRIST
and perhaps CHRIST
STOPPED AT EBOLI, but someone would need to upload that to
YouTube for me to check. That's a subtle hint).
Some guy is driving about when he all of a sudden hits a badly
disguised ramp and crashes, which instantly sends his consciousness
into some alternate reality where he's Jesus. While his car is
screeching along the road on its roof, he's standing in an industrial
yard when a bunch of people turn up representing the various
authorities in modern day Italian life - The Church, The State, The
Police, The Military and...er...The Hookers. This lot drive up in a
bunch of cars and proceed to tie Jesus up and set him on fire. Back
in reality, his car burns away. I knew this one was going to be hard
to describe.
Later, in some unknown city, Jesus is wandering around when he finds
a woman who has been beaten up by some youths. Jesus helps her and is
taken home, where he tends to her wounds and she explains that she's
become a hooker due to being hooked on drugs. Then she sparks up a
pretty fat dooby and hallucinates all sorts of crap before getting in
on with Jesus in a scene that must have involved some hardcore bits
because it pretty much jumps through that fairly clunkily.
Mind you, the whole film is pretty disjointed so who knows. Now,
D'Agostino cleary wears his influences on his shoulders because
there's a fairly large Fellini and Pasolini vibe about this whole
film, and never more so than in the huge brothel that hosts in the
form of guests all those authority figures, who are being serviced by
a topless Madam and her naked charges. Jesus watches while everyone's
attention is drawn to a huge foam mouth sitting in the middle of the
floor, from which emerges a blonde girl whom I'm guessing from the
plot keywords on the IMDb is a hermaphrodite. Then from what I can
gather the Madam invites everyone to either shit or piss on the floor
before Jesus goes nuts and loads of people get arrested. This would
also be known as 'that bit in a film where I wonder why I'm bothering
watching any further'.
Jesus is arrested with a bunch of left-wing revolutionaries and
while waiting in the corridor he hears the police beat a guy to death
and then try to cover it up, causing widespread riots. Jesus himself
cures a blind guy and gives him powers to heal others which leads to
more political upheaval, and the powers that be have to think of a
way to sort things out...perhaps by getting Jesus on their side?
Whatever happens, there's sure to be plenty of nudity.
Filmed nicely and with an electronic
soundtrack that's by far the best thing about the film, THE
CEREMONY OF THE SENSES is a commentary of Italian life that's
been commented on in much better ways, and is seemingly heavily
influenced by SALO,
OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (still haven't watched it yet). It
also pretty much follows the twelve stations of the cross, with a
Last Supper scene consisting on the authority figures laughing for
seven minutes (!) while getting noshed on by naked slaves and Jesus
getting persecuted by the police. Of note, however, is a scene that
reflects the one in THE SHINING
with Jack Nicholson and the lady in the bath. I wonder if D'Agostino
ripped that one from the Stephen King book?
It's all kind of pointless to be honest. D'Agostino would go on to
make the hermaphrodite film EVA
MAN (TWO SEXES IN ONE) before descending into porn with BATHMAN
AND THE PLANET EROS and DEFECT
IN THE BELLY.
Cjamango
(1967, Italy, Western, Director: Edoardo Mulargia)
Notable
actors: Ivan Rassimov! Mickey Hargitay! Piero Lulli! Plus, many
familiar faces from the Sergio Leone films...
There's
something not right about this film and I can't figure out what it
is. The cinematography is excellent. Ivan Rassimov makes a good hero,
with Mickey Hargitay backing him up as the mysterious gunfighter with
a secret. Piero Lulli does a good turn as the grinning evil bad guy,
and there's a huge gun battle at the end. Somehow, however, I wasn't impressed.
Maybe it's because it's just so damn generic. Ivan Rassimov is
Cjamango, a cocky gunslinger who wins a shitload of money and gold in
a card game, only to have it immediately stolen from him when a gang
led by The Tiger (Lulli) and Don Pablo (the guy Lee Van Cleef shoots
through a pillow in THE
GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY). They do this in the most
subtle way - they storm the saloon the card game is taking place in
and gun down everyone in it (watch the table falling on Rassimo when
he's shot - he seems to get a bit of a shock!). Not only do they not
pay local drunk Hernandez for tipping them off about the money, The
Tiger steals the lot and hides it out at his ranch, much to the rage
of Don Pablo.
Some unspecified time later, Cjamango returns, and wants his money
back. To do so, he'll have to watch A
FISTFUL OF DOLLARS, because this film generally follows that
plot, what with the two rival gangs and Cjamango proposing
allegiances and what not. I suppose Cjamango isn't so much of an
anti-hero, as he stops a woman from being raped and chums about with
some kid that's been ostracised because the dumbass villagers think a
scar he has it the plague.
The thing is, I couldn't have given a crap. The film looks great
(the HD version I watched was nice), but where's the quirkiness and
sleaze? It's like Sardinian director Edoardo Mulargia decided to play
things real safe and the result is one of the most straight down the
middle Spaghetti Westerns I've watched. It does have the gunfights
and what not, but the only notable scene was Lulli tying the kid up
with some dynamite and lighting the fuse in order to force Cjamango
to tell him where the gold was.
Maybe some folks prefer their Westerns this way - realistic and
grim, but I prefer mine slightly surreal or quirky, like Carlo
Lizzani's REQUIESCANT or KEOMA.
Conjugal
Love (1970, Italy, Drama,
Director: Dacia Mariani)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Macha Meril!
I
should have known what I was letting myself in for with this
weird-ass film, as this was written and directed by Dacia Mariani,
who also wrote the off-beat THE
INVISIBLE WOMAN and the even weirder KILL
THE FATTED CALF AND ROAST IT.
The premise of the film doesn't sound very promising: a married
couple stay in a huge villa in Sicily. The husband (Tomas Milian) is
a writer struggling with an extremely bad case of writer's block, and
is considering writing for the local communist newspaper as they keep
harassing him to do so. His wife (Macha Meril, who if you saw her now
seems to have aged in Helen Mirren years) is even more bored than he
is, tending to a citrus grove which is their only source of income,
and being driven crazy by the terrible hired help. The only way out
seems to be the offer to buy the land by Milian's distant family...a
distant family who also happen to be Mafia property developers.
That's doesn't sound that exciting, does it? And the tedium and
inertia of the couple in the villa is the plot's main focus, which is
carried out in a cyclical way. Milian gets a daily shave. Meril goes
to the shops. Milian meets the communists. Meril fights with the
staff. Meril and Milian eat dinner. The same thing happens the next
day. And the next, while in the background the Mafia employ cheap
tactics to try and get the land.
The thing is, all this is done in the strangest way possible, with
the quirkiest characters. The barber who cuts Milian's hair has a
very strange haircut himself, and is a lecherous womaniser. A
sub-plot develops on whether or not he rubbed his crotch on Meril's
shoulder while giving her a perm. The hired help don't like him,
calling him a thief, but then what we see them do is basically sponge
off of Meril and Milian. The help is basically a grubby father/son
team who steal Milian's booze and cigarettes. The son in particular
is bizarre. He permanently walks around with a blaring radio around
his neck and seems to have a fascination with throwing objects out of
windows. He's also a tuneless singer in a band and uses Meril's
clothes to clean his shoes. The Mafia presentative who now and again
appears to try and persuade Milian to sell the land talks like a
poet. There's even a scene where Meril greets a young child only to
be answered by "I like your thighs. I would definitely do
you." And so it goes on.
The film probably still wouldn't work if the two leads weren't up
for it. It's no surprise that Milian is up for being covered in
filth, screaming, and walking around naked, because that's pretty
much what he does, but Meril pretty much does the same thing! The
film literally starts with Milian eating a raw egg yolk (with half of
it dribbling down his chin), while Meril licks artichoke juice from
his chest. Turns out these bizarre meals are part of the cycle too -
at one point Meril scoops out a fishes eyeball and eats it, just
before the hired help takes the rest of the fish away and dumps it in
a pond. The next meal consists of a huge plate of soft shell crabs
with raw, giant onions and random tinned stuff. The fact that these
two act like everything that's going on around is not only normal,
but boring, won me over.
I'm still leaving plenty of stuff out of the review to discover for
yourself. Fans of Milian should definitely track this down. This and THE
YEAR OF THE CANNIBALS, made the same year. In that one he
acts like a rat in a city full of corpses that the citizens aren't
allowed to move!
Contact
(or The Encounter - who knows?) (1992,
Russia, Horror, Director: Albert S. Mkrtchyan)
Notable
actors: Nyet!
From
good old Russia and their altruistic concern for British politics
comes a spooky horror film that has barely any special effects
whatsoever, but still manages to brew up a nice atmosphere of grimness.
A sweet old lady is woken up one night by an alarm going off in a
neighbour's house, but when she investigates she finds the young lady
living there dead, having slashed her wrists. Even more nasty is the
discovery of the woman's son, seemingly smothered to death in his bed.
A young detective is brought in on the case, along with his sidekick
dog Smok, who is going to get rather heavily involved in proceedings,
poor thing. The detective discovers via the neighbour that this young
lady had a married lover who would visit, and therefore tracks the
guy down. However, this is where things start getting weird for the
cop. The guy, who has a solid alibi, tries to get the cop to drop the
case, but then reluctantly reveals that the girl was hounded into
killing herself by her father, who used to visit her every night.
That sounds like strange behaviour for a father, and even stranger
behaviour for one who has been dead for twelve years. Before the cop
can ask this guy if he's talking out of his arse or what, the guy
also kills himself.
At the funeral of the dead girl and her son, the cop bumps into her
much sexier sister, who also has a small child. At first, there's no
talk of ghosts or suicide or such, but I guess that the rules of
attraction mean that after a good meal it's usually the appropriate
time to reveal to a potential lover that the ghost of your dead
father is stalking you and wants to take you and your child into the
afterlife for some vague reason. Rather than making his excuses and
running for the hills, the cop instead decides to stick in there.
After all, the ghosts did predict that the woman and the cop would
marry in a week (don't ask).
The first half of the film is pretty sinister but kind of drags a
bit. However, when the ghost dad starts trying to get proactive in
expanding his post-mortal family, things get downright creepy. The
young child gets very, very sick, and the cop knows that if she dies,
her mother will kill herself, and then there'll be no more
hanky-panky for the cop. If only he could find a way to communicate
with the paterfamilias? When he does, it'll catch you off guard.
Without revealing much more plot things get stranger and spookier as
that damn ghost dad (and possibly others?) are hanging around the
place ruining the cop's sex life and getting on his tits with the
anger and the threats and such like. Even the dog gets involved,
being friends with the little kid one minute, then freaking out at
things that aren't there the next. Basically, the film travels on a
dark trajectory that just keeps on getting darker and more random
before we get to an extremely dark ending indeed.
This one was a nice surprise and worth a look for folks into ghost
stories. Keep in mind however that the budget seems to me to have
been extremely low, and stick through those draggy bits, because
there's a good few shocks later in the film.
The
Cop In Blue Jeans (1976, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Jack Palance! Maria Rosaria Ommagio! Franco Garofalo
Guido
and Maurizio De Angelis Soundtrack!
Well,
this is where it all starts. The franchise for which both Tomas
Milian and Massimo Vanni are most famous. This is Tomas Milian as
quirky cop Inspector Giraldi, a strangely-dressed, dirty-looking
freak who keeps a mouse called Serpico and likes to get the bad guys
in less violent fashion than his contemporaries (even those played by
Milian himself).
The film was a huge success in Italy, mainly due I guess to Milian's
off the wall performance as Giraldi, a crook turned cop who is always
trying to track down a bad guy called the Baron, plus some other guy
who keeps leaving message consisting of nothing but 'Up Yours!' on
Giraldi's answer machine. Things are played out lightly enough until
the Baron accidentally steals five million dollars from a hard case
gangster (Palance) and starts getting his mates killed while the
Mafia try and get their money back.
This doesn't stop Milian getting it on with the strangely patient
Maria Rosaria Ommagio (who looks like Kate Bush), a robbery victim
who doesn't seem to mind going to bed with Milian even though he
wears two pairs of socks, three jumpers and some nifty red budgie
smugglers, because of course no Milian film is complete without him
at least appearing once in his underwear. He also takes her disco
dancing which made me burst out laughing at Milian's moves, as well
as his get-up and the hat he wears that has "Tomas Milian"
written on it in red pen.
It has a mainly light tone this film, but don't think of it as some
sort of Eurocrime 'TRINITY'
film. The film does mainly stick to the grim plots of before, just
with a much better character up front than the usual stone-faced
killing machines. And his mouse wears a little hat at the end!
Oh, and all Jack Palance did was chew cigarettes and scowl, as
usual. Is it strange for me to think that if you look at Jack Palance
and Angelina Jolie in profile, they both look the same?
Cop
In Drag (1984, Italy, Crime/Comedy,
Director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Bombolo! Others!
This
is Tomas Milian's last (and eleventh)
film playing ex-thief-turned-cop Nico Giraldi,
and I've no doubt that although it was a popular series in Italy,
surely the audiences were getting tired of this stuff by 1984. Don't
get excited by the title either - Tomas Milian does not cross-dress
in this film, so there's another fantasy that's never going to become
reality for us. Er, you, I mean.
This time around the flimsy premise that's going to serve as a
backdrop to all the japes is the murder of a drag queen at a club
called Blue Gay in Rome, but Inspector Giraldi has to turn down the
job due to his wife giving birth to their second child, and although
Milian does attempt to participate in looking after the baby, the
incessant screaming of the kid and his wife drive him to take on the
case, and to pretend to his wife that's he gone to New York, even
though he's still in Rome. You can tell where that one's heading
right away, as there's always a bit of marital strife in these films.
Milian suspects a rival drag queen is guilty of the murder, and
plans on infiltrating the trans scene by pretending he's gay, with a
transgender partner. For this he cajoles thief Bombolo into donning a
dress (with much slapping, their signature move) and the two head off
for the club. The drag queen, who performs as Colomba Lamarr, is
rather quite taken by Milian, but if they are prime suspect in all
this, who is the shifty looking guy following them around? And why is
he trying to listen in on their conversations? And what has it all to
do with those German fellows that are hanging around?
I have to point out that plot isn't a strong point in these films.
They just drop Milian (and Bombolo) into a stupid situation and milk
some jokes out of it, have a couple of scenes where Milian proves
irresistible to women (and trans folk in this one), and throw in a
couple of scenes of him mouthing off to his superiors. A couple of
action scenes, and the jobs a good 'un. Except there's barely any
action scenes in this one - just Milian catching a homophobic drug
dealer, a slight punch up, and Milian chasing a guy in a car while
driving a horse-drawn chariot and dressed like a Centurion. There
are, however, five dance sequences in this film, one of them to a
sped-up version of a song from Bugsy Malone.
The mystery of the killer isn't very exciting either, so the other
question is - is it funny? Well, not really. There's a couple of
moments with Bombolo that are okay, but mostly it's slapstick and
screaming, with Milian slapping Bombolo over and over again. I even
read that this was so much of a running gag that Milian even slapped
Bombolo's coffin at his funeral. I'm not making that up.
So in short, it's garbage, and Tomas Milian was deported from Italy
shortly afterwards due to this film (I'm making that bit up), where
he returned to America and wore a hat forever more because no one
would guess that he had started going bald in the late seventies.
Corbari
(1970, Italy, War, Director: Valentino Orsini)
Notable
actors: Giuliano Gemma! Tina Aumont! Frank Wolff!
Despite
the year it was released, this is no boring DIRTY
DOZEN rip-off where a band a daring Allied soldiers head
behind Nazi lines to do something or other. In fact, Nazis barely
feature at all in this ultra-serious film. This is all about Italians
fighting each other.
Giuliano Gemma is
Corbari, a hunter who does not want to be drawn into the war,
especially on the fascist's side. One day, while a fascist friend is
trying to convince him to join up, they spy Italian fascist and a
Nazi release a dog after a naked prisoner. Although advised not to
get involved, Corbari shoots the dog, and his friend shoots the naked
man, so Corbari shoots him. Before you can say 'that escalated
quickly', Corbari is on the run and becomes a partisan, but on his
terms only.
With his trusty friend and biographer Casadei by his side, Corbari
quickly forms a fairly large partisan unit in the North of Italy,
which quickly becomes a pain in the ass to all the rich landowners up
there. Along with the Italian army, these guys start to form a plan
to get rid of Corbari, so maybe the very keen Tina Aumont is a spy?
Or an ultra-keen ally? And can fellow Partisan Frank Wolff, up in the
mountains, strengthen Corbari's army?
Gemma's well known for semi-goofy Westerns, but he's a strong enough
actor to get serious, as he does very well here (And also in the
films THE IRON PREFECT and THE
WARNING). Corbari is a strong individual with a very clear
vision of what he wants to get done, even if reality has a habit of
kind of getting in the way of such strong ambitions, and this is a
film about World War 2, so don't be expecting sunshine and lollipops either.
Grim, dark and tragic all the way through, CORBARI contains
two execution scenes that are rather realistic in their
matter-of-fact manner, plus one sudden suicide of a character that
took me back. Probably best watched back to back with also-realistic
war film MASSACRE IN ROME
for that extra "World War Two was depressing" feeling.
Corleone
(1978, Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Pasquale Squitieri)
Notable
actors; Giuliano Gemma!
Claudia Cardinale! Francisco Rabal! Michele Placido! Tony Kendall
(yes, the one from those Spaghetti Westerns)! Fulvio Mingozzi!
The
rise and fall of a Sicilian gangster from the director of GANG
WAR IN NAPLES. Giuliano Gemma is the man in question, and
somehow Gemma can de-age himself by dying his hair black, because at
the start of this one I thought they'd hired some sort of lookalike
to play him as a youngster.
You see, Giuliano and mate - old droopy drawers Michele Placido -
are just trying to survive on the streets of the town of Corleone,
Sicily. Giuliano sees the way out of his poverty via the Mafia,
whereas Michele wants to back the people and lead a socialist
revolution against the gangsters. Gemma gets his chance first, when
he kills a man with a shovel during a work dispute (abruptly brutal).
Local mobster Francisco Rabal witnesses the murder but agrees to
cover it up if Gemma will work for him. On the other hand, Placido is
going to prove to be a total pain in the arse to the Mafia...
This film alternates between Gemma's rise to power and his
present-day trial for kidnapping, while long-suffering wife Claudia
Cardinal stays loyally by his side. The problem here is that Claudia
isn't given much to do in this film until the last scene, so I was
kind of let down to find she's relegated to mostly reaction shots and
standing in the background while Gemma takes centre stage. He is
quite good though, going from youthful arrogance to cold, calculating
killer while also suffering from serious guilt when Rabal pits him
against Michele Placido, who, in a very vocal performance, has become
the voice of the people.
People compare this one to THE GODFATHER,
but for the most part I see a lot of parallels with SCARFACE
(which was made later). A young buck proves his ruthlessness, takes
over the business, and lets his insecurities become his undoing. I
doubt Brian De Palma has seen this film though. It was hard enough to
find in an age where nearly every album or film is available for free
if you can be arsed typing in the title. It was worth tracking down
though. The opening murder by Gemma is a bit of a shock, and there's
moments like that dotted all over the film. It doesn't quite build up
a head of steam mind you.
Also notable is the performance by Stefano Satta Flores, an actor
who unfortunately died quite young at the age of 48. He also appears
as a paranoid businessman in the film THE GUN
(also starring Claudia Cardinale). Cardinale does have rather a lot
of good Eurocrime films under her belt, including MAFIA,
where she goes up against the mafia and the hateful locals to locate
her missing husband, and BLOOD BROTHERS,
where Franco Nero cries so much he's actually floating in a boat on
his tears.
Crime
At A Chinese Restaurant (1981,
Italy, Crime/Comedy, Director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Bombolo! Massimo Vanni! Enzo Cannavale
and...Tomas Milian again!
Let's
talk quietly, me and you. In 2021, a film starring a guy pretending
to be Chinese isn't going to be especially popular, and quite rightly
so. I mean, Tomas Milian is basically reprising his role from Bruno
Corbucci's brother Sergio's film THE
WHITE, THE YELLOW AND THE BLACK, and by referring to himself
as the 'mongoloid' (because, you know, Mongolia) and starting every
sentence with 'awww...', I'm sure he's not respectively paying homage
to Chinese culture (although in the Sergio film he did manage to
display a certain humanity as the Japanese Sakura). What I'm trying
to say is: if I showed my daughter this film she'd kick my ass, but I
found it funny in parts, so who am I to hate on folks who like Peter
Sellers in THE PARTY? To cut a
long story short, Milian is dead, so is Bombolo, and Corbucci, so
what are we going to do - exhume their corpses and kick utter fuck
out of their skeletons or just watch a film from a different era (40
years ago) and dig the moustache and huge eighties spectacles Massimo
Vanni is sporting.
It's an inspector Giraldi film anyway, so the plot is just an excuse
for Milian to ham it up as Giraldi, who this time around has a broken
leg and has taken a vow not to lapse into his usual sarcastic
swearing ways (which I have found out there's a word for -
'turpiloquio'). He's also building an illegal house in the country
because this is some sort of loophole if you build it before you are
caught. Who knows. The main thing is - Milian is also playing a
Chinese guy. Now, I had to muddle through this film in Italian, but I
think Milian's Chinese guy is supposed to be a co-owner of a Chinese
restaurant right across from the Trevi Fountain, and he gets caught
up in a murder when one of the customers is found dead of arsenic poisoning.
The key to all this is Bombolo, who this time is called...Bombolo.
He's currently working loads of different jobs, working as a
chauffer, a cook in the Chinese restaurant, and helping Giraldi build
his house. Plus, he gets a slap in the face every time he swears due
to Giraldi's vow. When Bombolo and Ciu Ci Ciao (Milian's Chinese
character) discover the body, they decide to take the cadaver home as
a dead guy in a restaurant would destroy it's reputation. This leads
to some actually funny scenes as Bombolo tries to drag the body up a
flight of stairs. In fact, the main key to the funny bits of this
film is because the funny bits most resemble the Three Stooges and
their antics.
Giraldi becomes involved in the investigation and quickly deduces
that Bombolo is involved somehow, but decides to keep his
investigations hidden from his superiors (one of which gets an
impromptu acupuncture session from Cio Ci Ciao). He deduces that a
clue might be held by the photographer hired by the restaurant to
make a bit of extra cash (and the photographer makes a bit of cash
himself from blackmail). This leads to a car chase through a factory
full of explosion chemicals where the photographer gets accidentally
frozen and his body starts sliding around the floor and bouncing off
of things, ending in Milian riding the body around and slapping the
crap out of an obvious dummy. It worked for me.
I did get some genuine laughs from this one, but I also like Adam
Sandler films so you might want to tread carefully here. Apart from
the car chase, there's maybe a lack of action that balanced out the
earlier Giraldi films, but at least it hasn't lapsed into the
'going-through-the-motions' of the last Giraldi film.
Then white actors shouldn't portray folks of a different colour.
Now, I'm off to watch something more culturally rich - Anthony
Hopkins playing OTHELLO.
I bid you good day.
Crime
In Formula One (1984, Italy,
Crime/Giallo/Comedy, Director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Dagmar Lassander! Licinia Lentini! Bombolo!
Massimo Vanni! That guy with the squint whose name totally escapes me!
Nico
Giraldi film number ten here, and although I expected it to be as
bad as COP IN DRAG, it's not even
close. That said, most people will probably want to avoid it like the
plague. This is broad, un-PC comedy here, although there's a bit of
action mixed in with some drama too. When they get the balance right
like that, the formula works for me.
This time around, as you can tell by the title, a top racing car
driver crashes during a race and dies, and it's quickly discovered
that the car had been sabotaged beforehand. As usual, car
thief-turned cop Tomas Milian is given the case, along with faithful
but not very bright sidekick Massimo Vanni. As you may know, Milian's
domestic life always features prominently in these films. In this
film he's got a troublesome brother-in-law who also likes to take
vehicles without the owners consent. There's also the omnipresent
Bombolo who Milian keeps catching trying to cause crimes, be it a
bank note scam or being the getaway driver in a robbery. It turns out
that Milian actually keeps a book of how many times he's slapped
Bombolo - is it 3,674 or 3,640?
Milian's son Rocky also features, and he's got a serious SMURF
obsession going on. As a person who grew up in the Eighties, I've got
to say I hated those fucking things. We also get a reference to
post-apocalyptic cinema when Milian's wife insists on wearing a
post-nuke fashion wear to the policeman's ball, and if you're all for
films from the Eighties referencing things that happened in the
Eighties, wait to you get to the FLASHDANCE
sequence in this film!
I'm getting ahead of myself though. First, Milian has to discover
that the Engineer in charge of the pit team at the race track has got
a really hot wife in the form of Dagmar Lassander. They both insist
that the dead driver was a great guy they loved like a son but there
was a rival team out there who hated him. It seems that he's going to
have to dig into the driver's past to find clues, but then something
monumentally stupid happens that you shouldn't think about too much
because the odds of it happening are astronomical.
After getting his brother-in-law out of a bad situation in a pool
hall with some nifty skills, he drops the guy off outside of his
apartment. Totally ignoring Milian's advice to stay on the straight
and narrow, he steals a white Mercedes and drives it to his nearest
fence. The guy freaks when he finds a corpse in the boot, and the
brother-in-law drives the car with the corpse in it to Milian's house
and begs for help, which, stupidly, Milian does. He goes to his
precinct and claims he found the car like that, prompting a
magistrate to investigate Milians past. Also, this corpse is linked
to the death of the racing car driver, but as I said, don't ponder
how much of a coincidence that is.
Although it gets a bit talky in the middle, CRIME IN FORMULA ONE
does manage to keep the balance of comedy, drama, and action just
about right, with a giallo plot that Milian actually refers to as
such in the dialogue. You have Milian doing the usual slapping
Bombolo and insulting Massimo Vanni (who literally obeys any order
he's given, even if it's pressing every switch in Milian's house to
see if there's a bomb attached). You have drama in the form of Milian
getting suspended due to his past, which he plays straight, and you
also get Milian foiling a robbery and a fairly decent chase sequence
involving two racing cars at the end of the film.
The most prominent scene in the film however is when Milian (or a
guy pretending to be him) does an energetic dance sequence like the
film FLASHDANCE (disclaimer: I'm guessing as I've never seen
it). He goes to a dance class to interrogate an ex-girlfriend of the
dead driver, but when challenged about why he's there, he breaks into
a lengthy, slow-motion dance that goes on for some time.
It's a decent enough entry in the series if you're already a fan
(unlike COP IN DRAG, where
it just felt to me like everyone was going through the motions).
Crimes a.k.a. Delitti
(1987, Italy, Giallo, Director: Giovanna Lenzi)
Notable
actors: An extremely tired looking George Ardisson! Gianni Dei! Luigi
D'Ecclasia, who doesn't even get a credit in this film but is more
well known as Shorty from 2019:
After The Fall of New York!
I've
read one review of this film, and in that review it states that this
is known as one of the worst of the gialli. Sure, it's really low
budget, the Guido and Maurizio De Angelis soundtrack swings insanely
from good to full fat cheese, the acting is randomly bad and the
giant cast confuses the plot, but I'll be damned if I wasn't
entertained. Who wouldn't be entertained by dwarf punch-ups, rampant
nudity, and a killer who injects his victims with a venom that turns
the victim's head into what looks like a giant foam mushroom?
It all starts with one of those rich people orgies where all those
rich people flock to a huge villa in Italy and get wasted on drugs
then have group sex before one of them is found dead with a face like
a ball of playdough that's had all the colours mixed in. This dead
person is Harry, a wild guy who has all sorts of lovers, and his
death has sparked a huge wave of panic among those who attended the
party, those who supplied the drugs for the party, and just about
everyone else associated with Harry. There's a murderer out there,
and everyone involved is overdue a venom injection!
On the case is an inspector whose daughter is concurrently reading a
giallo with a very similar plot to the movie, and a journalist who
wrote the giallo that the inspector's daughter is reading. How's that
for meta, Wes Craven? These two, with the aid of ill-looking police
chief George Ardisson, set out to find the killer among the several
hundred potential victims we have to confusingly sift through
throughout the film. There's relations of Harry, lovers of Harry,
drug dealers of Harry, and addicts of drug dealers of Harry all
getting involved in this thing. Most end up injected with venom and
having their face turn into a rubbery looking mess with an eyeball
poking out.
I did get the feeling that this film isn't exactly meant to be
taking seriously, as quite a lot of the film is less interested in
the plot and more interested in actress Michela Miti, who plays the
girlfriend of the guy who lent his villa to Harry in order for him to
have his orgy (this film is exhausting in that respect). Michela gets
to do a ridiculous seduction routine with villa owner William (whom I
swear turns to the camera and rolls his eyes, but can't confirm due
to the terrible print). She also takes part in a sexy photo shoot and
more sex scenes before getting turned into a foam horror. There's
also the police inspector having a punch up with a dwarf, and one
character being terrified out of her mind by being stalked by a
killer, only for it to turn out to be a random guy who discards his
disguise in order to perform a weird dance, and then run off!
Director Giovanna Lenzi, who also appears in the film, has a bit of
form when it comes to the giallo genre, appearing in old school films
like A...FOR ASSASSIN,
DEADLY INHERITANCE,
the great CRIMES OF THE
BLACK CAT, and the mysterious Gianni Manera vehicle CHRYSANTHEMUMS
FOR A BUNCH OF SWINE.
Crimes
and Perfumes (1988, Italy,
Giallo/Comedy, Director: Vittorio De Sisti)
Notable
actors: Jerry Cala! Eva Grimaldi!
Well,
this didn't quite work. CRIMES AND PERFUMES has been sitting
in my 'to-watch' list for years, and I can't say it was worth the
wait. Sometimes the giallo and comedy elements do gel, like in THE
CAT, but when a woman is on fire and screaming and a guy is
doing slapstick while struggling with a fire extinguisher, I'm not
sure what to think.
Frustratingly, the premise of this could have resulted in an awesome
late Eighties giallo that overdoes on the fashions and music of the
era, just like TOO
BEAUTIFUL TO DIE and NOTHING
UNDERNEATH. Someone is murdering women by giving them a
perfume that catches fire in halogen light, burning them to death.
The film also relies on giallo cliches like childhood trauma and
clues in photographs, and a normal guy trying to unearth the mystery.
But...it's a very broad comedy too. I realise this film was probably
just a vehicle for comedian Jerry Cala, and maybe fans of him will
like it, but sad giallo fans like me who tick these films off some
list like a birdwatcher catching a glimpse of a rare bird will be let
down, and in the end, is that not the true tragedy of the film? Does
director Vittorio De Sisti lie awake at night, pondering how die hard
giallo fans emerge from their dank unaired hovels into the blinking
sunlight, depressed as they have wasted yet another hour and a half
watching a load of crap? The answer is no...he died in 2006. Eva
Grimaldi fans will also be let down as she appears for about five
minutes, does a provocative dance, and goes up in flames.
I'm waffling because I can't even look the plot in the face. Jerry
Cala plays Eddy, a security guard working in a shopping mall whose
most exciting outing is tracking down the black-gloved arse pincher
haunting the stores. He works alongside Barbara, his fiance, who has
just been given a bottle of perfume by a mysterious stranger. A
couple of minutes later Barbara is a pile of ash in a corridor, and a
bumbling policeman is on the case, who strangely kind of resembles
Matt Berry from GARTH
MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE. This guy's just here to chase Eddy
about, thinking he's the murderer, but the real investigation is
undertaken by Eddy, and his sidekick Yoko, played by the very pretty
Nina Soldano (from NIGHT OF
THE SHARKS and FATAL
FRAMES). Not that you'd be able to tell that from the
version I watched, which was more like a 123rd generation porn VHS
that's been handed around a high school for years and had the tape
churned up by a teenager hurriedly trying to remove the tape from the
machine as they've just spotted their parents entering the front
gate. My brother broke our dad's VHS in this exact manner, getting a
porno stuck inside it in a mad panic and destroying the VHS player in
the process.
Look, it takes FIFTY minutes for Eddy to figure out that it's the
perfume that's the killer's method of murder, so that doesn't leave
much time for anything else to happen, save for Eddy pretending to be
a priest for ages in order to get a clue or two about the murders. I
suppose he uses a cheeseball Eighties computer method to figure out
the victims, and there's a chase scene at the end that seems to come
from a different film in its tone. This film is all over the place.
After watching this I'm a bit worried about watching some other
comedy/giallo films, like NO
THANKS,
COFFEE MAKES ME NERVOUS and THE
NOSEY ONE, although I'll probably watch the latter, because
Edwige Fenech is in it. And her arse.
A
Dangerous Toy (1979, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Guiliano Montaldo)
Notable
actors: Nino Manfredi! Marlene Jobert! Vittorio Mezzogiorno! Luciano
Catenacci! Mario Brega! Olga Karlatos! Pamela Villaresi!
Yet
another Ennio Morricone soundtrack, with a bit of Sergio Leone
executive production thrown in too.
Here's
an interesting one that the Italian audience, suffering through the
'Years of Lead', would have related to. The common Italian person in
the late Seventies must have been sick to the back teeth of the
constant political extremists, the terrorism, the corruption, and
most of all, the robberies and violent street crime. Would you be
justified in picking up a weapon and becoming part of the problem,
rather than sit back and take it?
Nino Manfredi is faced with such a choice. A meek accountant working
for a very rich businessman, he's started to get a bit paranoid about
life in general in what I'm guessing is Milan. Transporting large
sums of cash across the city is a nerve-wracking affair, even with
the armed bodyguards. All Nino wants to do is get home safely and
work on his time pieces in his clock-filled room, and have petty
arguments with his wife, who always seems to have a headache when
Nino wants a bit of the old filthy-squeezy.
Hell, Nino can't even get jars of passata from the supermarket
without getting shot in the leg during a battle between security
guards and robbers. Wounded, he's taken to hospital but ignored by
all the paparazzi there due to him being only a bystander. It's
during his rehabilitation at a local gym where his life takes a real
turn. He's just about to get his arse kicked by a bunch of guys
practising karate when hunky cop Vittorio Mezzogiorno steps in to
help him, kicking off a fairly intimate bromance! If you aren't
comfortable standing naked in front of a likewise naked guy and
discussing the last scene of FOR
A FEW DOLLARS MORE, that man isn't your true friend. Unless
I misunderstood that bit and all Italians discuss Sergio Leone films
totally naked.
Nino And Vittorio go jogging together, have lunch together, and have
dinner at Nino's house (where it looks like Vittorio and Nino's wife
might just be a little attracted to each other). Nino discovers he
has a hidden talent when Vittorio takes him to a shooting range and
Nino turns out to be a natural. He also becomes completely obsessed
by guns, taking his fascination to the same level as that of his
watch repair hobby, and totally doing his wife's head in.
A chance meeting between Vittorio and a wanted man takes the film in
a much darker direction than the pretty lightweight first half, where
Nino's deadly accurate shooting skills make him somewhat of a
celebrity, but then violence breeds violence, and Nino finds himself
in a world that starts getting harder and harder to escape from, and
relying more and more on the power he feels when holding a gun, much
to the detriment of those around him.
I knew next to nothing about the film before I watched it, the title
being something I added to my never-ending watch list a couple of
years ago, and I swear when it started I thought it was supposed to
be a kind of light comedy. Nino Manfredi seems to feature in a lot of
comedies (save for GIROLIMONI,
THE MONSTER OF ROME, which is also on my to-watch list), and
this goes in his favour here as he's kind of goofy and timid at
first, preferring to take a step back from things and be a bystander,
including those fiery arguments between his boss and his rebellious
daughter. However, when he realises the power in being able to wield
a gun, he changes, becomes brave and bold...and reckless. Hats off to
Marlene Jobert who plays his wife too - they bounce off each other
quite well.
Look out for Olga Karlatos as the wife of Nino's boss. I swear that
lady looks different in every single film I've seen her in. Luciano
Catenucci turns up as the guy hired to take over the dangerous
cash-runs, and Mario Brega (from AN
ANGEL FOR SATAN) appears as a bad guy who becomes Nino's
nemesis. This film isn't all about action however, although there are
a couple of shoot-outs. Vittorio warns Nino that a gun is not a toy,
and the film is more about Nino not taking that advice seriously.
One last note about Ennio
Morricone's soundtrack. I love the guy's work, but I do notice
that when called on to compose Eurocrime music, he tends to use the
same kind of sound - the soundtrack here kind of sounds like the
soundtrack to CORRUPT, which
in turn sounds like the one from VIOLENT
CITY, and THE UNTOUCHABLES.
Just saying is all. Well, that and there's a very similar film
called THE GUN, directed by
Pasquale Squitieri.
Dead
of Summer (1970, Italy, Giallo,
Director: Nelo Risi)
Notable
actors: Jean Seberg! Luigi Pistilli!
It's
going to be hard to write a review about a film that consists mostly
of Jean Seberg wandering around an apartment in Morocco, but let's
give it a go.
Jean Seberg is a frustrated, bored, and anxious wife of an
architect, languishing in an apartment in Morocco. We get to witness
such thrills as Jean trying to get the air conditioning to work,
knocking some ceramic statues around in a bored fashion, drinking
some cold water, watching paint dry, staring at her toes, and
annoying the hired help.
Hang on to the edge of your seat as Jean listens to recording of her
husband and tries to call her doctor, Luigi Pistilli, then has a
shower and stands at a window as towel falls off. Then she completes
a crossword and fills in some outstanding tax invoices before seeing
how long she can stand watching Channel 4 racing. Pulses race as Jean
walks into the kitchen but then can't remember why she went in there
in the first place, so instead she spends two hours scraping dried
cereal from a kitchen counter.
The plot thickens as Jean alphabetizes her compact disc collection,
then decides that perhaps chronological order might be better before
things take a turn for the exciting when we have a chase sequence
where Jean chases a fly around the house with a rolled up copy of a
newspaper, ending with the gory murder of the fly up against a
window. Then Jean sits watching cringe videos on YouTube for six
hours while stuffing Pringles into her mouth.
Gasp as Jean finally goes outside, only to drive aimlessly around
trying to find her doctor, getting annoyed by the locals, then
getting annoyed by the non-locals who languish themselves in a
private country club. Then faint in shock as Jean returns to her home
and starts staring at people again before dramatically finally
getting in touch with her doctor.
Jean Seberg fans will have a field day with this one as the film is
nearly a one person show. Giallo fans may not have such a good time
because the mystery of 'Where is Jean's husband?' is easy to solve.
The film looks good and is definitely leaning towards arthouse, but
maybe too chilled for its own good.
Jean Seberg's real life makes for particularly grim reading.
Possibly hounded by the FBI to the point she can't stand the anxiety
and kills herself?
Death
Has Blue Eyes a.k.a. The
Para Psychics (1976, Greece, Action/Sci-fi, Director: Niko Mastorakis)
Notable
actors: Jessica Dublin, who has a few notable Greek films and gialli
under her belt, including Greek giallo THE HOOK,
and who can forget her decapitation in ISLAND
OF DEATH?
Wow.
What sounded good on paper absolutely didn't work onscreen. I was
expecting a high octane, low budget action film where two guys
protect a psychic lady from shadowy government agencies, but what I
got instead was a little bit of that with a shitload of Robin
Askwith-style sex comedy mixed in for good measure. To make things
even worse, there's a huge generic Eurospy vibe about it all too.
English Vietnam veteran (?) Kowalski has made his way to Greece to
meet his friend Ches and bum about the Med for a bit. He does this by
stealing a ticket off a guy in England, locking him in a toilet, and
stealing his identity. Once in Greece, Kowalski meets his mate at the
airport and uses his stolen identity to blag a limo and scam a meal
from the hotel he's staying at by giving the waiter the wrong room
number. Strangely, the two women sitting next to him seen to know
he's faking it, and it doesn't help that Kowalski's charging a meal
to their hotel room. The younger of the women, Christina, reveals
Kowalski's real name and freaks the guy out.
Not that it stops Kowalski getting it on with his mates girlfriend,
who seemingly wanders around Ches's houses with only an apron on. It
also must be an open relationship too, because she jumps into bed
with Kowalski straight away, then, both Kowalski and Ches while a
parrot makes disparaging remarks. This was the seventies - I bet they
all reeked. Turns out that Ches had scammed his way into the house of
an older lover and she returns to find them all in bed together,
throwing everyone including the parrot out into the street. It's at
this point Christina calls, tells Kowalski she knows he's homeless
and that she has a job for him and Ches.
As Christina's mother Geraldine explains, she and Christina have
been on the run from Germany and need Kowalski's protection from
strange people who have been following her (including rather a lot of
guys on motorbikes). For me things start to get a bit hazy around
this point of the film because Kowalski and Ches seem to make things
a lot worse for everyone, and Christina doesn't seem to need any
protecting at all, because she can use her powers to blow shit up and
make people kill themselves.
So on one hand you have what would have made a kind of enjoyable
sci-fi caper with government bad guys getting whacked left right and
centre, but in this film the action always grinds to a halt so that
either Ches or Kowalski get it on with some lady in a light-hearted,
comedy manner. The only bit where this actually works is when
Christina remotely gives Kowalski the 'brewer's droop' when he's
about to get it on with a sexy racing car lady he randomly meets.
I'm a big fan of Niko Mastorakis (especially NIGHTMARE
AT NOON, ISLAND OF DEATH
and HIRED TO KILL), but
his debut film is a bit rubbish to be honest. There's plenty of
nudity and a couple of scenes of Christina using her powers that's
pretty good, but choppy editing, bi-polar tone, and lead characters I
hated instantly just put me off.
I did however get a huge 'FIRESTARTER'
vibe from this film (Christina does at one point start a fire with
her mind), so maybe Stephen King was unlucky enough to see this but
had his notebook with him at the time. Don't believe me? There's that
vampire kid trying to get into the house in Mario Bava's BLACK
SABBATH that turns up in SALEM'S
LOT, and the second last scene in THE
SPIDER LABYRINTH? The birth scene in the seventh Dark Tower book.
Death
Kiss a.k.a. He Killed His Wife
a.k.a. Rape Killer
(1974, Greece, Giallo, Director: Kostas Karagiannis)
Notable
actors: Lakis Komninos!
Proper
sleazy giallo here featuring some very hairy men indeed. In Greece,
former drug-smuggler and disgraced ship's Captain, Captain Jim, isn't
happy enough with the yacht his millionaire wife bought him for his
birthday (the ship is also called Captain Jim, by the way). No, he
wants the lot - the money and the house, so he can go hang around
with what I believe the youth of today refer to as his 'side-bitch'.
This girl looks a lot like Agnetha from Abba, which is fitting
because Captain Jim looks a bit like Benny from Abba.
Jim is also remarkably and hypocritically jealous of his wife's
former lover, a doctor who didn't like Jim's vibe but somehow didn't
manage to stop Jim muscling in on the millionairess. In one of many
unintentionally funny scenes in this film, Jim stands out on a
balcony to smoke a ciggy and spots his lover hanging around outside
in a car. He goes to meet her, just as the doctor emerges on another
balcony to puff on a sneaky ciggy of his own spotting Jim and getting
all suspicious and stuff.
Jim's plan is simple: there's a serial killer scaring the crap out
of everyone by stalking lover's lanes, shooting the guy lover in the
head, then dragging the woman out onto the dirt to ravish and slap
around and finally strangle. There's a lot of slapping in this film,
by the way. It happens that the killer (who is an undertaker) and Jim
know each other, something which the film actually takes time out to
give an explanation for. Jim and his wife will go to one of the
killer's stalking grounds, he'll rough up Jim, and before you know it
Jim's down one wife and up a seven figure fortune.
The killer's plan, however, isn't simple. I won't go into it in
great detail, but he doesn't trust Jim and is about three steps ahead
of him in setting up a very convoluted plot where he keeps various
other woman drugged up in his home and goes looking for a woman who
looks exactly like Jim's wife. He's also lucky to get away with an
awful lot of stuff out on open roads without any passers-by but let's
not analyse how stupid parts of this film are.
The pace for this one is pretty quick and although the actor playing
the killer is kind of goofy, he's pretty entertaining, too. The whole
film is filled with nudity. And slapping, loads of slapping. I've
read comments saying that the soundtrack isn't that good but I found
it fine, and very Greek. Culturally there's a bit of folk dancing but
I'm sure a disclaimer in Greek said there were no plates harmed in
the making of this film.
Desert
Commandos (1967, Italy,
Action, Director: Umberto Lenzi)
Notable
actors: Ken Clark! Horst Frank! Franco Fantasia! Howard Ross! Tom Felleghy!
One morning, a nice man called Umberto Lenzi excitedly sprung from his bed and ran to the nearest window. Pushing it open, he espied a young child travelling to school, and ushered him over.
"You there!" Lenzi cried.
"Me, sir?" The child enquired.
"Yes," Lenzi affirmed. "You. Go out there and buy me the biggest Turkey in all of Rome...and film Giovanni Radice killing it with a shovel."
"Why, sir?" The child enquired, becoming nervous in case any British light entertainers/weathermen were sneaking up on him while he stood still for a few minutes.
"Because I have had the greatest idea in the history of Italian World War Two films. You see-"
The telephone by Lenzi's bed suddenly rung. Tentatively, Lenzi lifted the receiver and uttered "Pronto".
"Ha! Lenzi?" A disparaging voice mocked. "This is Ruggero Deodato- King of Cinematic Animal Cruelty. I have just spent the morning filming Lorraine De Salle bumming a dolphin to death with a strap-on for my new film. How are you going to top that one, Umberto LAME-zi?" And with that, he promptly hung up.
"Damn that maverick Deodato and his inventive ways of killing animals. I am jealous, yet I cannot let this get in the way of my brilliant idea," Lenzi said, to no one in particular. However, keen to get away, the child indulged him.
"Why is that, kind sir?"
"Because I believe the Italian World War Two film genre has become stagnant due to the same DIRTY DOZEN plot being played out again and again, what with squads of American soldiers sneaking into Nazi territory to perform an assassination. However, what if we had a group of Germans trying to invade allied territory to kill Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt? That's much more intense. Plus, I'm going to have Horst Frank in there as a German soldier who doesn't believe in Hitler's cause, going up against his tight-ass commanding officer who likes to murder people in order to achieve his goal."
"Why should I give a fuck about all this sir?" The urchin gently enquired.
"You should care because you have a series of tense situations as a murderous soldier will do anything to obtain his goal while the audience isn't sure who these guys should trust, as they cross a desert full of mines, hostile nomads, sandstorms, and possible internal espionage problems," Lenzi explained.
"'Possible internal espionage problems' is the stupidest fucking phrase I've ever heard," explained the child. "Can I not just go now?"
The telephone rung again. Shaking, Lenzi picked up the receiver.
"WASSAAAAAAAP? Deodato here. I just had Ivan Rassimov drown a blue whale in hundreds of gallons of crude oil while tossing Koala bears into a bonfire with a pitchfork. Top that, ya mad rockets."
Lenzi dropped the receiver into the cradle and pinched the bridge of his nose. He addressed the kid outside, but discovered had left minutes previously. Either that or Jimmy Saville had bundled him into the back of a Transit van and was ferrying him to a lay-by somewhere outside of Leeds.
"You see, in this film you kind of root for Horst Frank but then there's a series of twists that keep you glued to the screen as well. It's like Tarantino's INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, only there's actually some action and there's not hours of redundant dialogue about nothing in particular that stretches out the running time and makes you want to kill yourself. There's not a lot of action but the mere journey they make to their destination is never boring for a second."
Horrific silence greeted the end of this speech. He leaned out of the window and noticed a dog turd with a hand-written sign stuck in it, saying "Watch out for this shite".
"Fine!" Lenzi exclaimed, "I'll make this film, then a series of old school Gialli that are actually pretty good, but still contain pigeon shooting and bull-fighting, then I'll have Ivan Rassimov join a cannibal tribe, then some Eurocrime films, then I'll show that TWAT Deodato who is the king of animal crueltly by having a gorilla fight Janet Agren with bike chains before forcing Maurizio Merli to stick fireworks up a white tiger's arse in front of a classroom of six-year-olds. I'M the fucking controversial director! ME!"
And with that, Lenzi returned to bed, and knocked one out to the thought of driving over a sloth with a steamroller.
Desert
of Fire (1971, Italy, Action,
Director: Renzo Merusi)
Notable
actors: Edwige Fenech! George Wang! Carla Mancini (didn't see her)!
Guiseppe Addobbati!
For
Edwige Fenech completists only, and that's only if you can manage to
knock one out to the only version that seems to exist of this film -
a Minecraft-looking blurry mess with Greek subtitles.
DESERT OF FIRE is kind of like a Western set in the Saharan
desert, with good guys and bad guys and a hidden treasure and all
that stuff, but it's a film that never really goes anywhere. There's
no energy to proceedings and things just kind of happen, then things
slow down a bit, then there's a little action and repeat.
What it involves is Chinese actor George Wang playing an Arab who
robs a jeep full of wages so he can use the money to track down the
hidden treasure of Sharif...something or other (I've forgotten
already). Wang kills everyone travelling in the jeep, then all his
sidekicks, but while he's being smug, someone steals the cash and
flashes bright light into his eyes. Firing blindly, Wang thinks that
the spirit of Sharif has come back to haunt him, and runs away to the
nearest town to very badly lie that the jeep was ambushed by someone
who wasn't him.
In the town, lost English ex-Patriot St John dreams of returning
home to England, but also needs to locate Sharif's treasure. Rather
handily, he's married to Sharif's daughter, and his own daughter is
played by Edwige Fenech, a girl also seeking to escape the desert by
procuring money, even through any, naked means. At first she attempts
to seduce Wang, but when he reveals he hasn't got the stolen cash and
tries to rape her, Fenech seeks other less traumatising avenues, like
hooking up with the mysterious Ben (or Bill? Man, this film is forgettable).
Ben/Bill has the cash and wants to use it for the greater good, but
he faces the wrath of Wang, the wrath of Fenech's mother, and the
machiniations of Fenech's dad. That rather small pool of character
means there's isnt going to be much by way of action in this one.
In fact, apart from a couple of lame gun battles and an explosion,
most of the action comes from Wang shooting at people through a scope
(or while standing on a moving horse, so kudos to the stuntman who
did that bit), so it's not so much a desert of fire as a desert of a
slight puff of smoke on the horizon.
Therefore, the highlight of the film is Edwige Fenech, and
thankfully she has to run about braless, because if she didn't I'd
have been in a coma after the first couple of minutes.
The
Devil's Ransom a.k.a. No Way Out
(1971, Italy/France/Spain/Sweden, Giallo, Director: Piero Scuime)
Notable
actors: Philippe Leroy! Marissa Mell! Lea Massari! George Riguad!
Roger Hanin! Well, that's the entire cast then.
Thank
God that there's hardly any action in this film, because it was
seriously interfering with the endless scenes of Philippe Leroy
travelling to and from work and the other endless scenes of a
troubled Philippe Leroy staring at things.
It's bad enough when the opening credits of a film are so slow that
they trick you into thinking you've become trapped in some sort of
cinematic event horizon where it's never going to end, but when the
film following the credits unfolds with the pace of continental
drift, you've got a problem.
We then cut to a clearly troubled Marissa Mell, who has a very
strange relationship with her husband, banker Philippe Leroy.
Philippe works for a high-ranking bank, acting as a courier to ferry
funds to certain account holders under the watchful eye of boss
George Riguad. Philippe's work often takes him away overnight as he
travels to Italy, France, etc with a lot of cash handcuffed to his
wrist. Whether or not it's this is causing tensions between them is
unclear, but they sit in awkward silence eating dinner until Phillipe
breaks a cup and Marissa goes of to check isn't hasn't woken their son.
Now, be warned that a lot of this film involves Philippe going back
and forth from his work and it's upon returning from one of these
trips (via his secret lover Lea Massari) he finds that Massari has
discovered their son missing and that a man has called claiming that
he has kidnapped him. The kidnapper calls Philippe and tells him he
wants loads of cash, but he should go about his business and act
normally, so Philippe...goes back and forth between work again. Sigh.
However, the kidnapper also has a bit of fun with Marissa, who is
demented at the thought of her son being kidnapped and will do
anything to get her back. Cue naked Marissa Mell pictures, which the
kidnapper develops in his mannequin filled home. He eventually starts
putting the pressure on Leroy to come up with the money, but when
Leroy is strangely nonchalant about the possibility of his son dying,
the kidnapper gets confused and confides in his partner, who turns
out to be none other than OH GOD there's a dog having explosive
diarrea outside my window, surrounded by laughing homeless people!
It's a Christmas miracle - wife, fetch the kids!
It's kind of hard to write about a film where nothing really happens
about 80% of the time, so all I can say is Philippe Leroy (from the
trippy THE LAUGHING WOMAN
and the introspective semi-Gothic horror THE
POSSESSED) does his best, as does Marissa Mell (from the
Spanish giallo VIOLENT BLOODBATH
and MARTA, which is also a kind
of introspective Gothic horror/Giallo film). There's a decent twist
towards the end of the film, but it's clear that director Piero
Scuime was a novice, as the editing is choppy and even confusing at
times, the pacing is woeful and he doesn't seem particularly
interested in injecting any excitement into proceedings. The film
even ends with a character on a train (yep, travelling again) while
staring into space, flashbacking the plot of the film.
Diabolically
Yours (1967, France/Italy/West
Germany, Giallo, Director: Julien Duvivier)
Notable
actors: Alain Delon! Santa Berger! Sergio Fantoni!
If
you've watched any late sixties film starring either Carroll Baker
and/or Jean Sorel, you'll know exactly what to expect here; one of
those old school giallo films where people try and outsmart each
other in huge houses/villas/mansions/castle for usually monetary reasons.
DIABOLICALLY YOURS wastes no time in building up the 'what's
going on this time?' vibe by having hunky Alain Delon waking up after
being in a coma for three weeks. Despite being drunk and driving at
one hundred miles an hour, Alain has survived a car crash. Even more
of a miracle is the survival of his wife, Santa Berger. This takes
Alain aback, not because she survived, but the fact that he's married
at all. For it would seem that Alain has completely lost his memory
due to the crash, but you can never be totally sure with these films.
By the time he gets out of hospital and gets home, Alain's
practically pinching himself. Not only is he married to the beautiful
Berger, he lives in a giant mansion, has classic cars lying about
everywhere, and a Chinese servant he can order about. What's not to
like, apart from Berger never seemingly being in the mood for a bit
of love action, and the fact that something just doesn't feel right
to Alain. They say that he's George Campos, owner of a construction
company, just returned from Hong Kong to live in the country. Alain
isn't so sure, because he keeps dreaming of Algeria and what is
supposedly his dog wants to take a bite out of him. Then again, he
can speak a little Chinese and remembers beating the servant so much
he has scars, so what's going on?
Those familiar with these mind-game film is that just about
everything that is meant to be true at the start of the film is
turned on its head by the end, and even though I was half-right when
it came to the mystery, director Duvivier (who has a lot of fans it
seems, I'm unfamiliar), throws in plenty of twists all over the shot
and plenty of stuff to make even Sherlock Holmes doubt himself, and
he was a HUGE fan of giallo films as well as a totally real human
being who definitely existed.
Also, with such flawlessly put together people as Alain Delon and
Santa Berger on screen making eyes at each other while veteran
Italian actor Sergio Fantoni sits in the background swigging wine, I
was aware that as a mere plain human being, if I theoretically
appeared onscreen beside them, it would be like some kind of ape-like
creature wearing a Guiness t-shirt had somehow wandered onto the set.
I guess that's why they are the stars and I'm the whatever it is I do.
In conclusion, it's hard to write about a film without revealing any
of the twists.
Diabolicamente...Letizia
a.k.a. Sex,
Demons and Death (1975, Italy, Horror, Director: Salvatore Bugnatelli)
Notable
actors: Gabrielle Tinti!
Those
bloody teenagers and their psychic abilities! You do your best,
invite them to stay when their mum dies, and what do they do? Start
glaring at things evilly, rub toast on the maid's face, and cause a
local doctor to miss his mouth when drinking water.
The girl is Letizia and she looks about as much like a teenager as I
look like Beyonce, but let's go with the flow. She arrives at the
villa of her Aunt Michela and her husband Gabriele Tinti, and
although things start out simple enough, it becomes clear that
something is a bit strange about Letizia. First, she comes on to the
butler, but at the same time scares the crap out of him by
transforming into some sort of demonic Bee-Gee! This affects his
sex-life with maid Gassella, who Letizia also comes on to (with some
erotic toast rubbing), which somehow causes Gassella to come on to
the Aunt. The Aunt resists, but someone is hiding and taking pictures
of the naughty deed!
Gabriele and the Aunt also take Letizia out for some dinner where
they are met by a psychologist (turns out the Aunt has been having
some sort of funny turns and may have had a breakdown in the past).
Letizia gives him the evil eye, which makes the psychologist simply
pour the water down the side of his face. Yes, Letizia has some sort
of evil power, but what does she want with the family, and who is
that guy hanging around the place, looking sinister?
What we have here is the plot of a late sixties giallo with a pinch
of THE EXORCIST thrown in because
this film was made in 1975. There's also a lot of nudity, and
Gabriele Tinti gets to sleep with every female in the cast. You get a
lot of dodgy visual effects as Letizia walks through walls etc, and a
nihilistic ending that's pure seventies gold. Too much screaming
though, way too much screaming.
Dirty
Heroes (1968, Italy, War,
Director: Alberto De Martino)
Notable
actors: Frederick Stafford! John Ireland! Curd Jurgens! Michel
Constantin! Howard Ross! Aldofo Celi! John Bartha! Tom Felleghy!
Ennio
Morricone Soundtrack!
Alberto
De Martino's a strange one, from a film making point of view. His
films for the most part are competently made and entertaining, but
most of them never really take off in terms of excitement or
insanity. STRANGE
SHADOWS IN AN EMPTY ROOM is the exception here, due to random
transvestite fights and what not, but films like CRIME
BOSS, THE MAN WITH
ICY EYES and THE
KILLER IS ON THE PHONE are examples of how his films never
really get going. Technically, they're fine, but they don't get the
blood racing. They're just okay films.
Same with DIRTY HEROES I'm afraid. There's a good cast, even
a decent battle near the end, and good cinematography, but my god it
takes forever to get to the action, and although I think Adolfo Celi
has the most Roman 'Roman nose' I've ever seen (sorry Guiseppe
Castellano!), even I get bored of looking at it eventually.
It's very near the end of World War Two, and three US soldiers have
just escaped their prison camp in occupied Holland. One is rugged
Frederick Stafford, called Sesame due to his safe cracking skills.
Another is an inexplicably red-headed Howard Ross (actually born
Howardo Rosso in Rome), another part time crook. The other guy gets
killed quickly so we'll never know his occupation. These two escape
to the partisans, commanded by Adolfo Celi. Seems like they all have
some sort of heist planned in enemy territory, so there's a whole lot
of planning and the whole gang to meet, so the first fifty minutes of
the film are taken up by this.
The gang include Stafford, Ross and Celi who will be doing most of
the leg work, whereas John Ireland (in a bigger role that usual) is a
US pilot and former partner of Stafford who will be causing a
distraction from the air. On the enemy side is Michel Constantin
(from the grim as fuck French film THE HUNT)
as a German soldier trying to make a bit of cash on the side and
Daniela Bianchi, who is coerced into doing the good guy's work
because they know she is a Jew hiding in plain sight by being married
to General Curd Jurgens, who is guarding the diamonds that are the
main purpose of the heist. He's a fairly benevolent leader, knowing
the war is done and just trying to keep his remaining troops safe
until it all ends. On the other hand, he's got a nasty SS officer who
has a serious case of denial going on.
And that's the set up, which is basically the set up for just about
every Italian war film from the sixties - it's the plot of THE
DIRTY DOZEN. When the film gets going it's good enough, with
scuba diving and boat chases and such like, but then things slow down
again for more talk until mercifully we get a large battle between
the US and German forces.
Surprisingly, De Martino then somehow gets ahead of the curve by
beating Peter Jackson's RETURN
OF THE KING by three decades for somehow making the decision
to have us sit through an ending for every single surviving
character, which adds on about ten minutes of run time. Thanks for that.
Another alright film from De Martino then. The Morricone soundtrack
is okay too, just rising above average now and again, and the film
looks rather good, but that's about it really, unless I can somehow
go back in time and give De Martino advice about pacing. I'm not
going to do that though, because if I ever learn to go back in time
I'm going to go back to the early seventies and kill Roy Wood of
Wizzard so I'd never have to hear "I Wish It Could Be Christmas
Every Day" ever again.
Distant
Lights (1987, Italy, Sci-fi,
Director: Aurelio Chiesa)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! William Berger! Laura Morante!
If
you are a big fan of Milian or Berger and haven't seen this film, I
recommend you do not read this review and instead try to track down a
copy. I'd never even heard of it, and just happened to notice the
title on William Berger's filmography on the IMDb (while researching
the film HER HAREM - review
shortly of that). This might be a sci-fi film from Italy during a
time where the film industry was waning, but compared to, say, MIAMI
GOLEM, you have a film that might be just as cheap on the
effects front, but is completely different in tone and structure.
Hats off to Tomas Milian as well, because I'm not sure many actors
could successfully play this role. Here, he plays Bernardo, a
recently widowed father of one, trying to put a brave face on for his
son while also trying to comfort his grieving mother-in-law. He's so
recently bereaved his wife only passed away a few days before the
film starts, so he's understandably upset that his son Guiliano
arrives for dinner well over an hour late, for the third night
running. He's not angry with the kid, merely comforting him and
gently asking what took him so long, and when Guiliano answers that
he was playing with his mother in the park, Milian's paternal
instincts take over and he reckons his son is just having a bit of
trouble getting over his mother's death.
Things get more serious the next day when Milian is contacted by
Guiliano's teacher Renata. It seems that although Milian dropped his
son right outside of the school, Guiliano never arrived in class.
Remembering that his son said he was playing in the park, Milian
heads there, where he finds Guiliano's schoolbook with the word
'Mama' writtten on it. The police get involved and eventually
Guiliano is found sleeping in some old tunnels next to the park. His
excuse is again that he was playing with his mother, but when he
presents Milian with the necklace his wife was buried in, things get
really strange.
Milian and Renato at first go to the graveyard, where Milian accuses
the gravedigger of stealing jewellery. The man protests his
innocence, and on the way back home Milian spots his wife from a
distance. By now the police, the gravedigger and mayor/doctor William
Berger have become involved, as he personally treated Milian's wife
and signed the death certificate, but when Milian's wife's coffin is
taken to the morgue, occupied only by a dead vagrant, it is found to
be empty. Worse still, Milian meets that vagrant in the same tunnels
his son slept in the night before...
I'll go no further with the plot than the moment Milian comes face
to face with his seemingly resurrected wife, because it's this moment
that perfectly reflects the tone of the film (and it occurs only
about half an hour in, so there's much more to discover here).
Director Aurelio Chiesa doesn't go for scares or hysteria (although
certain scenes in the film are very atmospheric); he presents a man
who has possibly imagined he's already gone through the worst period
in his life presented with something he couldn't possibly have
predicted, and Milian's conveying of utter incomprehension mixed with
grief and love is something to behold. This isn't the loud, screaming
Milian of BROTHERS TILL WE DIE
or the subdued, underplayed Milian of Fulci's BEATRICE
CENCI, but a new side - a middle-aged, melancholic side I
hadn't seen before, and it's impressive.
He continues in this vein throughout the rest of the film, which has
quite a few unexpected turns throughout, as well as a great
performance from William Berger as the stoic public representative
who wants to subdue stories about corpses walking about and tries to
use logic to solve what's going on. He gets his own scene near the
end to show off his acting chops too, and nearly pips Milian to the
post in the emotional stakes when he breaks down and pleads for help,
or even just hope from Milian, which led the point of the film to
finally sink in to my not very smart brain.
It was about this point I realised that what is superficially a film
about aliens (don't get excited about that - you see as much as some
blue laser lights and that's it), is really a film about dealing with
bereavement, and the fact that when we lose someone we can't,
initially, grasp that they are truly gone and keep hoping for them to
walk back in that front door, wishing that anything could bring them
back. This is sad film, but not overly so - it does have it's
bittersweet moments too, plus an out-of-nowhere full front nude scene
by Laura Morante. There's no violence as such save for two nasty road
accidents, but this film doesn't need anything like that - DISTANT LIGHTS
is its own kind of entity. There's even a mix of comedy and horror
when one poor fellow is mistaken for a reanimated person and get
locked in a room with a load of actual reanimated people.
I don't know if this Claudio Argento produced film is well known or
not, or even if an English language or subtitled version is
available, but it should be more popular. It took me totally by
surprise, and I did find myself welling up now and again (note - I
may just be insane, however). One of the few other Italian films that
managed that was the Edwige Fenech tearjerker ANNA:
THE PASSION, THE TORMENT. I see there's another late-era
Tomas Milian film directed by Damiano Damiani called MASSACRE
PLAY that looks good too.
The Drifting Classroom (1987, Japan, Sci-fi, Director: Nobuhiko Obayashi)
A
bit of advice for kids and parents of kids - don't have massive
arguments with each other that you later regret, because sometimes
the chance to make up never comes, be it through accident, disease,
or your kid's entire school getting caught in a time slip and thrown
in the future. A bad future.
This happens to young Sho (Yasufumi Hayashi), who storms out on his
mother after she scolds him for dancing around her naked singing
Camptown Races (I say she had good cause) and refusing to attend
Japanese class. You see Sho and his family have just returned from
Los Angeles and now Sho is attending an international school full of
international students, which I guess is why quite a bit of the film
is in English. It also gives us quite a variety of characters, as one
hundred and eighty-one kids find themselves in a future full of sand,
monsters, and death.
Sho withstanding, the pupils include a nice girl who fancies a rich,
athletic white boy who proves to be one of the more complicated
characters here, a fat guy called Piggy, an American kid who can't
stop chewing bubblegum (who gets the film's most spectacular death),
two sets of twins, a girl who keeps fainting, a very young kid called
Yu who followed Sho to the school, and a scientist-like kid who
provides what little exposition were allowed in this crazy film.
Adults include actor Troy Donohue, who has the hots for the lovely
young teacher who becomes a mother figure for everyone, an old lady
who doesn't seem to mind what's happening, and a delivery guy who
becomes violently insane because his dog was turned into a skeleton
(but also seems still alive in the 'past'), The amount of characters
becomes rather overwhelming as even more are introduced after the
entire school ends up in a bizarre place where it rains sand.
There's a lot of elements to this film that's like a cheesy kids
movie, which includes teeny-bopper romance and TWO somehow
spontaneously occurring dance/music numbers (one based on Here Comes
The Bride, and the other Camptown Races again!), a bit of ET,
by which I mean the strange creature who befriends young kid Yu (and
pisses on him [?]). This thing looks like a green arse with chameleon
eyes on its cheeks and prawn legs. It's initial appearance is a head
frying stop-motion sequence that kind of signals that the film has
stopped being plain weird and is now heading for completely weird territory.
Then there's the horror: one guy's face is melted by boiling water,
sand pours from a dead teacher's mouth, and one kid has his entire
flesh melted off his body. There are large monsters that attack the
school and the kids violently attack each other. I'm not even
particularly going into these scenes in great detail as I wouldn't
want to spoil the crazy imagery for anyone, but advise that you seek
it out yourself (it's made an HD appearance on YouTube as of March
2020, so you better be quick).
What makes the film so watchable is that you actually care for the
kids. Sho at first comes across as a hyperactive pain in the ass, but
then as his guilt about his last meeting with his mother sinks in,
her image becomes his focus to be a better person. His mother (one of
the few characters not thrown into the future who never gives up on
her son's vanishing) tries to contact him (and does, in a way you'll
have to see for yourself). This, along with a lot of the characters
being generally nice (rather than selfish and duplicitous, as you
might find in other horror films), makes you care about what's
happening and makes the ending rather poignant.. Or it might be that
I've slept about six hours in the last three days and would probably
find the ending of Luigi Cozzi's HERCULES
sad because he didn't throw enough stuff into outer space. For the
record, this Japanese horror film features the most well-rounded,
lovable and sensible characters I've ever seen in a film. Filmmakers
should do that more, in this world where everyone is angry about
everything all the time about ideologies they didn't even know they
cared about until the Internet and the Media shoved it down their throats.
Emma,
Dark Doors (1974, Spain, Horror,
Director: Jose Ramon Larraz)
Notable
actors: Susanna East! George Riguad...for a couple of minutes! Perla Cristal!
I
dissed Jose Ramon Larraz's AN
UNCERTAIN DEATH for being too slow, but that's not a problem
here with EMMA, DARK DOORS. The plot is a thin as the skin of
a bongo, but it delivers on the horror, with a couple of twists
thrown in for good measure.
Emma is a mentally unstable girl with no family and a dire fear of
becoming blind, so you can imagine how lucky she must a have felt
when she was run over by a car driven by a psychiatric nurse who then
subsequently took her in to care for her, nurse her, and give her a
bit of the old sapphic love. Doctor George Riguad voices a small
voice of caution towards the whole matter, but then it turns out he's
not in the film much anyway, so that's pretty much disregarded right
then and there.
The nurse, Perla Cristal (from hilarious William Shatner playing
twins WHITE COMANCHE and
the giallo THE
CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER) has Emma cared for in her rich
country house, but Emma's clearly a few beers short of a six pack and
terrorises the help. Perla has also hooked up with a rich
businessman, which does not please Emma one bit. I've got to admit
that in Emma's defence Perla sure gives out a lot of mixed messages,
from running her over to taking her in to care for her to slapping
her around for hanging around with psychic Lupe to threatening to put
her back in the asylum to trying to protect her after Emma goes nuts
and knifes Perla's lover to death.
The pair run off to the country, but Emma has got a serious neurosis
going on about people wanting to put her back into the loony bin, so
Perla's going to have to watch where she stores her sharp blades.
Just when you think you know where the film is heading, we get a nice
excursion into horror territory as a couple of hippies decide to be
Emma's friends, and you know hippies - act like assholes without fear
of retribution. Then again, you play stupid games, you win stupid prizes.
Benefiting greatly from being very short at seventy-five minutes, EMMA,
DARK DOORS just rolls along nicely, giving us some bloody kills
along the way and even throwing in some Bava-like head games when the
story randomly turns into a haunted house film. Susanna East does
very well as a girl that's struggling to match reality with her
destructive obsessions, and Perla Cristal also does her bit as a
woman who clearly loves Emma but has no idea how to control her.
The
Exorcist: Italian Style (1975,
Italy, Horror/Comedy, Director: Ciccio Ingrassia)
Notable
actors: Ciccio Ingrassia! Tano Cimarosa! Jimmy Il Fenomeno!
So,
my wife walked in on me the other day while I was rubbing sandpaper
on my balls in the kitchen and quite rightly was curious as to why I
was indulging in such an activity.
"Well," I began, pausing to dip my toes into some boiling
vegetable oil, "During lockdown, I've discovered that I like
inflicting pain on myself. I guess during this difficult and
snack-filled time we have all had to resort to various tactics in
order to pass the endless hours we've had to spend locked inside.
Mine is to, from time to time, use a cheese grater on my arse cheeks
for my own personal gratification, It just, you know, stops me from
breaking into our downstairs neighbour's house and beating him to
death with a toilet cistern lid because he won't stop fucking
drilling things."
"That's okay," my wife replied, "As you say, we've
all got to get our kicks somehow. Mine has been to lace dog treats
with poison and leave them scattered around the park across the road.
There's just something about a dog owner's face when their dog goes
into agonising paroxysms that, you know, just helps temper the
obsessive thoughts about murdering that neighbour who gets drunk
every Friday night and plays Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares
2 U" at full volume. I mean, he's fucking long term unemployed!
Why is he celebrating a Friday night - was it a hard week sitting on
his arse doing nothing but smoking skunk and drinking Malibu?
However, if I may offer you some advice, you have not suffered enough
pain until you have sat through THE EXORCIST: ITALIAN STYLE."
"You have piqued my interest," I said, wiring up my
nipples to the microwave, "And it is strange that you, who have
literally no interest in Italian films, should suggest a rare title
to me, the sad, bald, Italian film enthusiast cursed to watch every
Italian film ever made! Pass me those pliers, and tell me of this
film. Is it like BEYOND
THE DOOR? I liked that one. Or is like that MAGDALENA
one where the girl ran around shouting about her fanny the entire film?"
"No, it is not. THE EXORCIST: ITALIAN STYLE is a horror
comedy by comedy duo Franco and Ciccio, only Franco isn't here for
some reason. Ciccio Ingrassio (whom I believe you liked in the film TODO
MODO) wrote, directed, and starred in this one. It's kind of
just THE EXORCIST, only instead of
one person being possessed by Satan, there's multiple people as the
possession comes from whoever has a strange amulet on their person."
"Go on," I said, and took a casual drink of bleach.
"Well, first to get possessed is the son of the mayor, who is
shit at football one minute, but when he has the amulet on his
person, he's able to kick a football through a tree, swears a lot,
and sexually assaults women while stealing their underwear."
"So he's like sixteen or seventeen or something?"
"No, he's ten."
"Well, we'd better move on from that and not think about it too much."
"I agree. The family need someone to help them out, so they
turn to Ciccio Ingrassia, a fake guru/exorcist who dresses up as a
priest and goes to the kid's house, where the kid has a fight with
everyone that's almost good, so they ruin it by including a Benny
Hill-style chase sequence. Then he drops the amulet and his sister
picks it up so she turns from a quiet girl to doing a striptease in
front of her family. Then they do the exorcism scene from THE EXORCIST,
only using chillies instead of crucifixes, but you get all the stuff
flying about the room and all that. Plus, instead of pea soup, one of
them gets hit in the face with cheese. Speaking of cheese, can you
hand me the cheddar, some razor blades, and some nails?"
"Sure - here you go. Tell me more of this film, for it sounds
like while watching it I would cringe so much my testicles would
retract into my body and sprout out of my ears, which would be rather
unconventional, but would also act as ad hoc ear warmers during the
winter season."
"Indeed. So, the girl loses the amulet and it ends up in the
hands of the mayor's wife, who proceeds to grow a beard that leads to
an interminable scene in a barbers. Later, the mayor himself ends up
with it and does the head-spinning thing while pissing on a stage,
which leads to a rock-n-roll song that strangely predates the shitty
"Devil in A Blue Dress" from the film REPOSSESSED.
Then, Ingrassia eats the amulet and explodes. For some reason."
"I've got to admit the film sounds painful, but I have also got
to ask, is there any point in me watching now that you've told me the
entire plot?"
"I've not got time to answer these questions as I now have to
go to the park."
I watched on as my wife lifted a carrier bag laden with dog treats.
"I'm off now," she said, and turned to me, "One more
thing - do not shove the kid's pet rats up your arse again. I don't
know how they accepted my last explanation, but I'm not going to be
able to come up with another excuse like that."
And she left, not knowing that it was already too late.
The
Face With Two Left Feet a.k.a.
John Overwhelmed...by a Strange Destiny* (1979, Italy, Comedy,
Director: Neri Parenti)
Notable
actors: Massimo Vanni! Sonia Viviani! Adriana Russo! Claudio Bigagli!
*In
Italian, the title is John
Travolto...da un insolito destino - Travolto meaning overwhelmed
in Italian. I'm guessing 'underwhelmed' will be the general reaction
to anyone reading that fun fact.
When
I read the word 'disco' and the name 'Massimo Vanni' on Amazon
Prime, I excitedly totally forgot about it for several months until
it dropped off Prime and I had to search it out on the internet, when
I finally remembered to watch it, as Amazon Prime have rather
unhelpfully dumped most of the Italian films on there. Now I've got
no reason to pay them any money. Except for THE
TICK Season Two, I guess, and that'll probably be gone by
the time I get to it.
Yes, this is one of those broad Italian comedies, but for once it is
actually funny, to me at least. It involves a bunch of friends who
all work in a hotel, trying to set their mate up with the sexy
DJ/dancer lady who works in the disco called John's Fever. The mate
is Gianni, the cook at the hotel, and a goofy, awkward sort, with his
bushy moustache and giant glasses. He's a terrible dancer too, but
underneath that exterior lies a face that rather closely resembles
belly-buttoned chinned disco-visiting mad shagger John Travolta.
Could that possibly be the key to getting that DJ to let him on her
proud mary?
Assisting Gianni in his transformation are his mates, and as they
all pretty much share the entire screen time with Gianni, let's find
out who they are. First up is hotel porter Massimo Vanni (from
excellent Eurocrime film FIRST
ACTION HERO and most famous in Italy for backing up Tomas
Milian in those Inspector Giraldi films).
super-hot Italian actress Sonia Viviani (from THE
LAST GUAPPO and my dreams, which also perhaps features
Massimo Vanni, too), Adriana Russo, who continually locks her boss in
the clothes shop she works in within the hotel, Claudio Bigagli who
is a bag boy, some guy who operates the lift, and a
Travolta-obssessed switchboard operator. Pretty much everyone appears
on screen all the time throughout the entire film, getting into jolly japes.
For a change, however, the japes are jolly! I did actually laugh at
some of the gags in this film, from the Bee Gee piss-take disco track
that consists solely of their high-pitched 'Ah!' noises, to Massimo
Vanni's accident prone slapstick (let's admit it, he's not John
Gielgud, but a physical actor, so it works here). There are many sub
plots that carry the film along too, mainly the hotel receptionist
who has learned to sleep with his eyes open but in doing so leaves
himself open to continual pranks from the main cast. He also gets to
be the experimental subject for the group testing how closely Gianni
resembles John Travolta, which leads to him actually punching the
real John Travolta, who turns up at the hotel. Or at least an actor's
legs pretending to be his turns up.
I was getting a bit worried around the middle of the film when the
disco music dried up but when Gianni turns up at the club in Travolta
mode that all kicked back in again, providing us disco fiends with
plenty of disco action. The entire soundtrack is on YouTube by the
way, so somebody out there cares. Interestingly, the soundtrack
includes a track by Linda Lee, who sings that awesome dark disco song
that's playing in ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS
when Ian McCulloch and Tisa Farrow are trying to sneak onto the boat.
That's called 'There's No Matter' and was a single, backed by the
b-side 'Love was the Magic', which leads me to believe that English
probably wasn't Linda's first language. Fulci also used one of her
songs in The Psychic too. She's woefully underrepresented on YouTube.
Suspiciously, they even include a Massimo Vanni combat sequence
where he does a few stunts. This takes place during a huge disco dancing/fight
scene at the end of the film. It's like someone went into the future
and discovered that a sad bastard (me) was a huge fanboy of Vanni,
then went back in time and added that to the script. You do get
plenty of Vanni screen time here, so try not to blow a gasket when he
flicks he eyes straight at you at the end of the film and does a
cheeky 'sniff' expression. I was just recovering from Sonia Viviani
doing a double eye wink send off at that point. Ruined a perfectly
good pair of boxers shorts right there and then.
In conclusion, I bet that Travolta lookalike Guiseppe Spezia looks
more like John Travolta now than John Travolta does, seeing that
Travolta looks like a peanut that's fallen behind a cooker and is
only discovered years later when the cooker is removed, sporting a
proud beard of fungus around it's lower half.
The
Fall of Rome (1963, Italy, Action?
Director: Antonio Margherriti)
Notable
actors: Ida Galli!
There's
doesn't appear to be any reviews of this one anywhere, and after
watching it I can see why. It's not only boring and uninteresting,
but compounding the crapness is Antonio Margheriti Godfrey Ho-ing
some other film into certain scenes (or rather, building scenes
around the footage he's 'borrowed'). I'm almost certain this is what
happens in this film, but I can't check, nor am I an expert enough in
Peplum to identify the film the footage has been nicked from.
The ultra-thin storyline involves the persecutions of Christians in
Rome after the death of the Emperor Constantine (himself big on the bible-bashing),
this means that Romans who are enthusiastic for polytheism are
turning on their Christian fellows, even if they are in a
high-ranking position like tribune Marcus and his wife (Ida Galli,
a.k.a. "Evelyn Stewart"). Marcus goes from beefy nice guy
to homeless beefy nice guy fleeing for his life while being chasing
by his own soldiers. His wife is gravely injured, but only by
breaking a dam and flooding the plain below does Marcus escape. It
also gives good ol' Antonio Margheriti the chance to break out the
minature sets and provide us with one of the few interesting scenes
in the film.
Marcus hooks up with a barbarian tribe, but not soon enough to save
Ida. Then again, her death means Marcus has got the green light for
barbarian Svelta (Loredana Nusciak), so it's a kind of "glass
half empty, glass half full" kind of situation, and Svelta in my
opinion is definitely an upgrade on Ida Galli. Marcus goes all DANCES
WITH WOLVES with this tribe, but when he gets the offer to
fight in the arena in order to free his Christian homies, he's back
in Rome before you can say "Jesus, has only half an hour of this
film went by?".
I was going to slag off Marcus's moobs but now that I've been
trapped with my kids during lockdown for months on end doing nothing
but eating and drinking beer I'm just going to shut up about that and
move onto to the stolen footage. From here on in, whenever the film
has to get to something epic, footage from another film creeps in, be
it shots of a crowd watching Marcus take on gladiators in the arena,
or the big battle at the end, some other film kicks in, with some
close up shots of Marcus and whoever to pad things out a bit. In
Margheriti's defence he does pull out the tiny sets in the end when
Rome gets destroyed either by God or by an earthquake. I'm not
watching this again to double check.
For a guy who provided so many kick-ass moments later in his career,
Antonio Margheriti sure has some stinkers right at the start - ASSIGNMENT:
OUTER SPACE drags on forever, BATTLE
OF THE WORLDS is only watchable whenever Claude Rains shows
up (because his character is a complete jerk!). You know what though
- I'm still going to track them all down and watch them all!
Fatal Deviation (1998, Ireland, Action, Director: Shay Casserley)
This
is a rural Irish kickboxing film, and therefore it's hard to get by
the fact all the character look and sound like they've just walked
off the set of FATHER TED.
It's also shot on video, badly acted, has terrible sound and rubbish
effects, but it's so earnest and charming the whole thing turns out
to be pretty entertaining from start to finish.
Young orphan Jimmy Bennet just got out of reform school and heads
back to his dilapidated home (which is seemingly just around the
corner). In his head, we hear him say "Oi must foind out what
happened to moi fadder". Jimmy is a champion kickboxer, and as
we'll find out, needs next to no provocation before his feet are
connecting with people's heads. Just check out what he does to those
guys in the Londis supermarket who are annoying the girl who's
stacking the Crisp N Dry!
For some reason this tiny village has a drug kingpin with an army of
very Irish looking, tracksuit wearing henchman. The drug kingpin
seems to live in a caravan or something and has a gobby son who's
girlfriend is now hanging around with Jimmy (hilariously, Jimmy does
two guys in who are hassling her too, kicking one over a wall who
utters a very genuine cry of surprise and pain when he lands on the
other side). This also causes Jimmy to get banned from the local pub
(!) so he gives the bouncers a kicking, then just about everyone
inside too, including the gun wielding barman. "Fook yer gun, ya
prick", is the Bruce Willis-style one liner we get there.
There's also a monastery in the village where a mysterious monk
trains Jimmy up in martial arts before the big tournament which draws
every kickboxer from all around. The bad guys want to win, so they
kidnap Jimmy's squeeze so he'll take a dive. Or will he?
Filled with a ridiculous amount of action, including Jimmy standing
up on a moving bike so he can shoot bad guys, a shootout in what
looks like some sort of dump and Jimmy flat out murdering people
without a sniff of the Garda (Irish Police), FATAL DEVIATION
has all the clichés of a nineties action film, but is much
more enjoyable as it's carried out by amateurs. The songs were
terrible, however.
Best acting goes to the old drug kingpin, with his "Oi don't
pay you to sit on yer arse," dialogue. Regarding the guy who
fell over the wall - They show a montage of outtakes at the end which
shows you how much fun they had making this film (just like a Jackie
Chan film). The guy falls over the wall, we hear a cry, and the guy
sitting up saying "Oi'm not doing dat again".
Fatal
Temptation (1988, Italy,
Giallo, Director: Either Remo Angioli or Beppe Cino)
Notable
actors: Possibly?
A
giallo that tries to recall the old-style plots of the late Sixties
with the erotic attitude of late Eighties gialli, and then promptly
fails in every single aspect, mainly due to nothing really happening
throughout its running time.
Hotel owners Paolo and Silvia have a terrible relationship that they
try and hide from their guests and customers. Paolo is cheating on
his wife. During a wedding. In the basement. He makes as much effort
at hiding his tracks it's like as a side project he was hired to plan
the 'suicide' of Jeffrey Epstein. And he's not the only one. They are
all at it in this film. These days we're all too distracted by
YouTube lists and Coronavirus updates to make the beast with two
backs, but in the Eighties that's all they could ever think of.
Silvia heads off somewhere one day and Paolo takes his girlfriend
for a ride (a real one) in his posh car. Not long after, he's
involved in an accident that makes him blind. The young motorcyclist
that nearly loses his life due to Paolo feels strangely guilty about
being involved, and then gets some strange movements in his
undercarriage once he spots pouty, busty Silvia and her blind
husband. He's a jobbing actor, but Silvia hires him anyway and after
catching her husband getting it on with his mistress while blind (!),
she thinks 'to hell with this' and gets it on with the young fella.
Things get pretty tedious by this point because all the viewer has
endured is endless scenes of people getting it on while other people
listen in or watch them. I was wondering if anything was going to
happen when at last Silvia comes up with a plot to kill her blind
husband and get his inheritance. Things are complicated by her lover
being a reluctant killer and the fact that he also has a bit on the
side who might be in for a spot of blackmail once it all kicks
off...and I mean kick off like a small kitten accidentally batting a
cotton ball into a pile of odd socks.
Now, this film basically exists on YouTube in a copy about one hour
eight minutes long. I was thinking to myself "This film must
have been filthy before it was edited - I must track down a longer
version and confirm this for academic reasons". So I found an
Italian language version on YouTube (by using Yahoo or Bing to search
for the film because a direct search on YouTube doesn't bring up the
film. I have no idea why this happens), and that version runs at one
hour seventeen minutes, and that version is tame as hell!. There's
one shot of actress Loredana Romito having a shower, and the rest of
the footage cut out involves thigh stroking, moaning, and Paolo
smashing a vase. What was this film edited for? A children's TV channel?
Worse still, the lame attempts to create a giallo atmosphere
basically end in a wet fart. There's a murder, then a mysterious
murder, then a bizarre random gunfight, then the film is over. I am
VERY lenient when it comes to late Eighties Italian films (I love
them basically), but this was a poor, poor effort.
15
Scaffolds For A Murderer a.k.a. The
Dirty Fifteen (1967, Italy/Spain, Western, Director: Nunzio Malasomma)
Notable
actors: Craig Hill! George "Francisco Martínez
Celeiro" Martin! Howard Ross! Aldo Sambrell! Frank Bana! Umberto Raho!
I
thought this was going to turn out to be a giallo-Western, like KILL
THE POKER PLAYER. I mean - look at the title! Alas, this is
not an out and out whodunnit like that film. However, I did enjoy it
immensely due to the many twists, the tension, and the growling,
sweaty cast.
George Martin (from Spanish horror film DIABOLICAL
SHUDDER) is a horse rustler and he's just robbed a farm and
killed the owner. The owner's widow agrees to pay Craig Hill and his
gang seven thousand dollars to get those horses back, which Hill
agrees to. After a bit of investigation (and a few shoot-outs), Hill
finds that Martin has set up shop at a ranch owned by the widow Cook,
her sister, and her daughter. Her sister is due to marry hunky Howard
Ross the next day, but for now they are busy dealing with a
mysterious new neighbour and a bunch of hairy-ass cowboys sleeping in
the barn.
Strange thing is, when Hill and his gang turn up, there's no shoot
out as you'd expect. Instead, Hill and Martin agree to team up to
scam the widow for the reward money. That would be all well and good,
except for someone murdering all three women in the middle of the
night. Everyone's blissfully sleeping in the barn when Howard Ross
shows up to get married and discovers the bodies. He also finds a
bunch of strangers sleeping in the barn. Rather than take on a lot of
guys, he sneaks back to town and forms a rather huge posse. By this
time Hill and Martin have found the corpses and realise who's going
to get the blame for it. They barely escape before the posse comes
gunning for them, but how are they going to prove their innocence
when facing a hail of bullets, and who among them did kill the women?
Others might find the build up slow, but once this film gets going
it's pretty much action all the way, and it takes it's own route
plot-wise, rather than the old tired plots of bounty hunters and
corrupt businessmen. Here we have two gangs who barely trust each
other trying to survive together while being chased across the
endless landscape by bloodthirsty townspeople as one by one the gangs
get whittled down. There's plenty of violence and grim sights on
display, like the townsfolk hanging the bullet ridden corpses from
gallows so that the remaining gang members can see what fate they are
going to meet. Whereas I never seem to read a good word about Craig
Hill or George Martin, both do well here. They are not just
caricatures - they are complex characters trying to outsmart each
other and the law. Even minor characters get a chance to stand out -
the sheriff trying to calm the baying mob, the protective gang member
who embarks on a suicide mission to avenge his kid friend, and the
Scottish religious couple who sound like Groundskeeper Willie.
The cinematography by good old Stelvio Massi always helps too. I
don't know why this one gets bad press - it was pretty good.
First
Action Hero a.k.a. The Puppet
Master (1994, Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Nino Grassia)
Notable
actors: Middle-aged Fabio Testi! Old Gabrielle Ferzetti! Middle-aged
Orso Maria Guierrini! Middle-aged Giovanni Cianfriglia! Strangely
still young Massimo Vanni!
You
dont want to mess with Miami cop Fabio Testi. He loathes crime
and corruption, and he really hates it when his partner is crippled
by a masked gunman at a roller disco. He probably hates it mainly
because he's knocking on a bit and he's worried about his blood pressure.
As a cop, Fabio has a pretty complicated family set-up. Hes
divorced, which is usually a given for a cop like him, but his
ex-wife was the daughter of gangster Gabrielle Ferzetti, who used the
Press to run Testi out of town (although in saying that, theyre
on good terms). Fabios previously estranged daughter has shown
up to hang around his house like a typical teenager, and over the
course of the film he ends up dating Laurie, who is the lawyer for
the bad guys.
But has why Fabio been allowed to return to Miami after so long?
It's all down to a violent gang who are targeting the crime syndicate
running the city and massacring them, and only Fabio is mad enough to
go up against them. Youve got your typical tropes here as the
D.A. is on Fabios case and Fabio has a habit of killing anybody
who could lead him to the gangs leader, much to the D.A.s
umbrage. How is a cop supposed to get his job done while hes
chasing Massimo Vanni around Miami, dodging assassination attempts on
his life, badly preventing witnesses from being murdered and playing
mind games with his ex-father-in-law?
It might seem at first that this film is just going to drag on and
on, but the body count is through the roof and the film is rather
violent as the assassinations of the criminal syndicate are rather
heavy on the collateral damage. In fact, when two guys burst into a
restaurant and try to kill Fabio, they seem to hit everything in the
room except him.
What I love best about this film is the last twenty-minutes, when
Fabios daughter gets kidnapped and Fabio goes on the rampage,
seemingly killing every crook in Miami in a hail of bullets, or
killing them in a hail of bullets while driving heavy plant
machinery, or just giving up on hails of bullets and blowing the crap
out of everything with dynamite. He evens shoots a guy on fire and
another who looked like he was dead already, plus the bad guys get in
on the act as one manages to fire off a shot while falling off a tall
building to his death. This is all done on a budget of about ten pounds.
Thats not all though Fabio also has to take on Giovanni
Cianfriglia in a middle-aged man mud fight (Cianfriglias a
little grey around the temples, but still looks rock) and a slow
motion scene before the film ends.
Theres doesnt seem to be a great deal of Eurocrime films
from nineties, and the Stelvio Massi films
from this era are a bit tepid, but Im pretty sure Im not
going to see anything as good as FIRST ACTION HERO. Its
like THE BIG RACKET with an
enlarged prostrate gland.
Foodfight!
(2012, US, Kids, Animation, Director: Lawrence Kasanoff)
Actors that
surely needed the money for cocaine: Charlie Sheen, Hilary Duff, Eva
Longoria, Christopher Lloyd, Jerry Stiller, Cloris Leachman and many
other suckers.
Imagine
Charlie Sheen on a crack binge (or maybe I should have just said
'imagine Charlie Sheen') mixed with the video for The Residents'
Constantinople. Picture Nazi-imagery mixed with supermarket products
and very thinly-veiled sexual innuendo. Take this mix and pretend the
animators were forced at gunpoint to produce the film on a ZX
Spectrum while also blindfolded and full of LSD and you're still only
getting a glimpse of the nightmare that is FOODFIGHT!. This
film cost 45 million dollars to make!
The premise is that at night in a supermarket all the brand icons
come to life, like NIGHT AT
THE MUSEUM mixed with TOY STORY.
Protecting everyone is Rex Dogtective (it hurt just typing that),
but when his extremely badly animated girlfriend goes missing, he
gives up his job and runs a club instead with his stereotypical black
sidekick Daredevil Dan (who is made of chocolate, but looks kind of
like a squirrel with a scrotum for a face). Meanwhile, in the human
world, a walking animated nightmare voiced by Christopher Lloyd start
putting Brand X on display, which causes Foodworld, or whatever it's
called to be taken over by Nazi food products.
But why go on with the story? This film is easily one of the worst
high-budget animated films I've laid eyes on. Nothing looks right at
all, from the expressionless faces of the characters to their body
movements to the backgrounds and the crowd scenes that just repeat
the same five or six characters over and over again. It is truly
diabolical, especially considering it was made in 2012.
Everything else about this film is awful too - The
voice-acting is an assault on the ears and it just shows you what
actors will do for cash spouting lines like this:
I'd like to butter your muffin!
You better go easy on the potato juice before you get... chip-faced.
I'm not the one who's gonna be puppy whipped, you cold farted itch.
I believe those quotes cover the dialogue well enough too. If you
want to see something that is vindaloo strength bad, FOODFIGHT!
is way up there. Way way up there. It's like suffering an acid
flashback on behalf of everyone who took acid during the rave years
in one go.
Formula
One: The Hell of The Grand Prix
a.k.a. Maniacs
on Wheels (1970, Italy, Sport/Drama, Director: Guido Malatesta)
Notable
actors: Brad Harris! Ivano Staccioli! Agostina Belli! Franco Ressel!
Fulvio Mingozzi! Graham Hill (What?)
I'm
not exactly an expert on Formula 1 racing. All I know is that
there's a guy around just now called Lewis Hamilton who always wins
these races, because when the COVID crisis started, he was kind
enough to lower himself from his celebrity status to show us stinking
vermin masses how to wash our hands. I'm glad he did, because if he,
and many other famous people who seemingly think that they'll die if
people aren't paying attention to them for more than five minutes,
hadn't uploaded videos on social media showing us unimportant,
irrelevant scum how to wash our hands, I wouldn't have discovered
that up until now I've been doing it all wrong. You see, what I
thought were my hands turned out to be my knees, and although I know
now that I have to use soap and water, I was until recently rubbing
my knees in a pool of baboon semen and washing it off using Castrol
GTX. Thanks, Lewis Hamilton, Gordon Ramsey, and all those other
celebs out there! Thanks for uploading videos of you all showing us
how to wash our hands! Can you upload one showing us how to wipe our
arses too, please? Because up until now I've been using the hair of
that old-age pensioner neighbour of mine.
Having suffered through ONE HUNDREDTH
OF A SECOND, I know that putting drama into sport is not an
easy task, and that opinion is reinforced by this film. It's not as
bad as that skiing snore-fest, but it's not exactly as rip-roaring
emotional rollercoaster either. It follows the career of one Ken
Stark (Brad Harris in non-acting mode), a man determined to win the
Grand Prix from the hands of actual real life fast car-driving dude
Graham Hill. Stark works for manager Franco Ressel, who has a few
other drivers under his wing too. Look, I don't know how racing works
at all, so don't bother writing in to point out the technicalities of
Formula One. There's some drivers that seem to be all on the one
team, including Harris, Ivano Staccioli, and some other guy who likes
to bring his wife and kids along for good luck. There's also a rival
manager guy whom Ressel pulls smug faces at.
When Staccioli has a crash and ends up paralysed, Ressel has him
replaced by up-and-coming motorbike driver Valli (Giacomo Agostini,
who was a real life motorbike controller pilot. He also does better
acting than most of the cast, so kudos to him). Depressingly, whereas
I thought I had only LE
MANS, SHORTCUT TO HELL to watch after this film with regards
to racing-themed films, I notice that Agostini also starred in the
musical (!) LOVE FORMULA 2
and motorbike film RACING
CARS ON THE ASPHALT AT FULL SPEED. That one is on YouTube so
I guess I'll review that at some point too.
Valli is young and ambitious and literally cocky, especially when it
comes to Harris' wife. His momma worries about him, but then every
driver has someone who worries about them, like that driver who has a
wife. He doesn't want to drive anymore, but when Harris convinces him
to go back on the road and brave those 'parabolics', the guy ends up
looking like overcooked Kofta and Valli gets kicked right out of the
team for causing his death, out of the team and straight into the
arms of the rival manager, who has a mechanic on his team played by
perennial bit-part actor Fulvio Mingozzi! He has more to say in this
film than the last ten I've seen him in, and most of it is racing car
bollocks. Skidding limit? What the fuck is that? He also has a
mega-car for Valli to ride in the last race, but can Valli beat
Harris and also beat Graham Hill? You'll have to not bother watching
this film to not care about finding out!
Somehow not coma-inducing but by no means any good either, director
Guido Malatesta tries to include every trick in the book to keep the
viewer's interest, like having us hear the thoughts and worries of
the drivers, seeing their day-dreams of victory, and including
split-screen flashbacks that you can hardly see on the pan and scan
version available online. Those expecting a lot of Graham Hill should
expect mostly stock footage of him and some proper footage of the
actors trying to talk to him while he looks confused and nervously
smiles, like a film crew just snuck onto the racetrack and started
filming him. Everyone else (except Ressel, Staccioli and Agostini)
just half-arse the film, especially Harris, who arrives home to find
Agostini getting it on with his wife only to just stare at them a
bit, and then leave, like he's forgotten to get something out of the car.
It's been on YouTube since March and only 165 people have watched
it, and I guess about 65 of them are me dipping in and out of the
film while doing something more interesting. Still, the relentless
drive to watch every Italian film ever made will force me to watch
all the other films mentioned in this review. Some say I have a
choice, but it is a curse. A curse!
The
Gestapo's Last Orgy a.k.a. Caligula
Reincarnated As Hitler (1977,
Italy, War, Director: Cesare Canevari)
Notable
actors: You've got to be kidding.
VIDEO
NASTY!
Fucking
hell! Who's the intended audience for this crap? I think even serial
killer Fred West would have had trouble with certain scenes in this
one. In fact, I think in one of his last interviews he said "I
liked the bit where they covered that woman in cognac and burned her,
but the bit where they showed pictures of a woman eating shit was a
bit too far to be honest. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to bury
one of my daughters, who I've just murdered, in my back garden."
I suppose if you're going to make some sort of exploitation film
about the Holocaust you might as well go the whole way and make it
almost a parody of the horrible events of World War Two. Not that I'm
a fan of this kind of film. In fact, even though I've spent four
years watching every Italian film possible, the old Nazisploitation
films have never been a priority, but then this one showed up on
Youtube and as I'm also trying to watch all of the "Video
Nasties" on the BBFC list, I had to make the stupid decision to
watch it, because I'm not fucking paying for a film like this.
Once you're suckered in, you'll find that the plot involves an
ex-concentration camp survivor called Lisa helping some Nazi
commandant called Conrad escape a death sentence, but just why she
does this isn't immediately apparent. Following the trial, the two
meet at the abandoned camp, which triggers a flashback that involves
all manner of disagreeable crap.
You see, Lisa's taken to some woman-only camp where the girls there
are to service resting soldiers from the Eastern front, and to truly
cement the tone of this film, a bunch of naked soldiers are shown a
series of pornographic slides, like a mother having sex with her
daughter and the aforementioned 'woman covered in shit' picture,
which triggers a huge orgy/rape scene. I'm not sure I'd be turned on
by someone covered in shit in any situation, but then again I'm not German.
It's around this point we get introduced to Alma, Conrad's lover,
who likes to feed women to her dogs when they are on their period
(the women, not the dogs), who also likes to torture the prisoners.
When realising that Lisa doesn't seem to suffer under any torture at
all, due to her misguided guilt in thinking she was responsible for
her family getting sent to the gas chamber, she and Conrad embark on
an adventure where they try and push Lisa as far as possible to make
her beg for her life. It should be noted here that Alma shoves a whip
right up Conrad's arse because he spunks his pants while torturing
Lisa, but in the next scene, Conrad is using the whip while
addressing the troops. I hope he gave it a rinse first, the dirty bastard.
Full of torture and speeches about how the Reich can just do
whatever they want with Jews, including making lampshades out of them
and underwear made of hair (did I actually see that?), the film
really, truly scrapes the bottom of the Italian exploitation barrel
when there's a huge dinner party involving all the Nazis, where the
main course is a stew made up of unborn Jew babies. Once again, I
must ask who the intended audience for this was, taking into account
Italy's allegiance during the war.
I couldn't recommend this to anyone, to be honest.
It should be noted however that apart from directing this quicklime
prisoner-dipping crap, Cesare Canevari does have some films under his
belt that aren't shit. There's the weird Crime/Giallo HYENA
IN THE SAFE, which is one of the stranger Gialli out there,
plus the surreal Western MATALO!.
However, he dropped the ball on his last film, KILLING
OF THE FLESH, a giallo where he included so much sex that he
didn't leave enough space for the actual giallo plot!
Getting
Even a.k.a. The Vendetta (1989,
Italy, Action, Director: Leandro Lucchetti)
Notable
actors: Richard Roundtree! Harrison Muller! George Ardisson!
Now
I'm not going to call MIAMI COPS
a great film, or even a good one, but who in their right mind would
gather the three lead actors of that film and basically remake it,
only with Vietnam vets instead of cops? That's what Leandro Lucchetti
did here, and if you've watched his APOCALYPSE
MERCENARIES, you're probably not going to watch this.
It's nowhere near as bad as that Godfrey-Ho like, cobbled together
crapfest, however. This is because the stolen footage here is mainly
of the exploding hut kind, and Lucchetti throws in enough nudity and
action that made me stick it to the end, like a McDonalds that isn't
that great, but you eat it anyway because you need to eat something.
That mainly happens in the last third of the film, however, because
what we have here mostly is a buddy movie exactly like MIAMI
COPS.
The film starts off with a homeless Harrison Muller getting shot in
the stomach by some guy who were going to rape some chick, and while
he's in hospital it gives him plenty of time to have a flashback back
to the Nam, where he was conflicting with another soldier, Slisco
(Yes, Cisco would have been easier, but there you go). Slisco (sigh)
likes to brandish and threaten other soldiers with a fancy knife that
he also likes to torture Vietnamese hookers with. This doesn't go
down well with Muller, and the next think the two are fighting and
its only the intervention of Major Richard Roundtree that saves the
day. Although he might have considered sending the both of them on a
secret mission together a bad idea as Slisco heads home without
Muller and Muller gets five years in a VC prison for his troubles.
Now Roundtree is back because him and FBI agent George Ardisson (who
has appeared in all flavours of Italian movies, from gothic horror KATARSIS
to piss-take giallo CLAP,
YOU'RE DEAD and even a bit of Mario Merola in THE
INMATE [where Merola reduces a whole prison to tears by
singing a song about his momma!]). It seems that not is Slisco up to
his old tricks at carving up hookers with weird blades, he's now head
of an international drug-running ring. At least he's been keeping
himself busy, unlike Muller who we first see sleeping under a bridge.
Also, fifteen years have passed but no one's aged a bit.
The return of Slisco means that at first Roundtree and Muller have
to run around the good ol' US slapping drug dealers around and
getting into punch-ups and gun fights, which is all good, healthy
stuff. Where the film runs into trouble is when Muller heads off to
Vietnam to track down his old buddy, because when Muller starts
getting into gun battles in the jungle, it seems that all they've
done is film him shooting at stuff off-screen while bits of others
films are shown (especially when it comes to stuff that costs money,
like huts exploding and stunts). Even worse, it does look like Muller
is on location in the Nam (Philipines then), but Roundtree obviously
hasn't even left American soil, because he doesn't even appear in the
footage with Muller! Instead, he also shoots at stuff off-screen.
What can you do when the biggest name in the film can't be bothered
appearing alongside the guy who's taking part in the stolen footage
sequence? Plus, I swear there's a short shot of Roundtree running
through smoke that's been lifted from a Seventies film of his - the
stock changes and everything.
Still, there's nudity galore as all parties get involved with naked
ladies, and the action is pretty much non-stop, even if it is crap.
The
God Serpent (1970, Italy, Horror,
Director: Piero Vivarelli)
Notable
actors: Nadia Casini! Beryl Cunningham!
I
suppose when you're in a strange land you can get pretty curious
about the locals and surrounding environment, but I don't think I
ever witnessed anyone dive head first into the unknown like Nadia
Casini does in this film, then again I've also never witnessed
someone get bored with that almost instantly and just go off and do
something else instead. And then get bored with that too.
This atmospheric film starts out with Nadia Casini and her new
husband arriving on a Caribbean island. Nadia is young, pretty and
spontaneous whereas her husband is old and pot-bellied. He does have
a shitload of money though, which is why Nadia married him. In fact,
first thing he does is take Nadia out on his yacht, where she sees a
mysterious part of the island. Her husband tells her she should never
go there, as it is called Black Rock and the locals are scared of it.
Nadia then immediately drops the subject because she spies local
woman Beryl Cunningham running around a beach with her arse out,
making love to some guy in the sand.
Beryl turns out to be a former secretary of Nadia's husband who now
works as a teacher. Nadia's interest in piqued as she's been looking
for someone to chum about with. There is the guy who works on the
yacht and fixes her radio, but all she does with him is ask him about
Black Rock, to which he says she probably shouldn't go there as it's
dangerous and stuff.
When Nadia finally gets to hang out with Beryl, they do all these
cool things that friends do when they meet up, like get naked in
front of each other, sunbathe topless with each other, take showers
in front of each other and even swap clothes with each other. Gaining
Beryl's confidence, Nadia confides in her that she doesn't love her
husband and is still looking for true love. Beryl says she knows
someone that could sort that out for her. Nadia also asks her about
Black Rock, and Beryl warns her that the locals shun the place, and
that she should leave it alone. So when Beryl falls asleep while
sunbathing, the first thing Nadia does is swim over to Black Rock and
gets startled when a huge python starts moving towards her. Nadia
tells her husband about the incident and also complains that nobody
warned her about Black Rock, but he just tells her she's talking crap
because there are no snakes on the island.
Nadia also gets deeper into local culture when Beryl takes her to
see a local witchdoctor in a creepy graveyard who does a quick
ceremony where Beryl sees the transparent figure of a white guy she's
never seen before and Nadia receives a love potion from the voodoo
guy. I couldn't help but notice that even though this guy was very
badly crippled and was struggling with two walking sticks, Nadia just
kind of stood there and let him walk all the way towards her over
rough terrain, which lends more to the idea that maybe the director
told Nadia Casini that her character's motivation was that she just
never thought about anything, ever.
It isn't long before Nadia's chatted Beryl into taking her to one of
those voodoo ceremonies she's seen on television and we get the low
point of the film. Rather than go into details I'll just state the
phrases "Goat","Machete", "Italian
Film", "Seventies" and "Unnecessary" and
we'll just move on to one of the high points of the film, where
Beryl, Nadia, and just about every female at the ceremony goes nuts,
strips off, and writhes about in the dirt. This pleases the head
voodoo lady, and indeed the mysterious guy standing behind her.
It turns out the guy is The Snake God and he's taken a liking to
Nadia, so he makes the voodoo lady ask her out for him because he's a
bit shy and they end up on Black Rock getting it on, so maybe Nadia's
found true love after all. Better still for Nadia is her husband
dying in a plane crash roughly around the same time so now she's free
and single, and has a huge house on a Caribbean island so you can't
get better than that then, eh?
Well, Nadia also has an ex-lover called Tony whom she brings over
from Rome the day after her husband's funeral. Beryl's all like
"Wait - didn't we just bury your husband?" and Nadia's all
like "Well Duh! That was YESTERDAY, silly." So Tony's here
to service Nadia, but will the God Serpent be okay with this set up,
and why is Tony the guy Beryl saw in her vision? You'll have to watch
the film to find out.
Strange that such a film plays out like a horror for the first hour,
then with the arrival of Tony becomes more of a soap opera. The
scenes of the witchdoctor and the voodoo lady are great, moody,
atmospheric moments, as is the Serpent God kind of hanging around the
fringes of Nadia's reality. There's also a massive amount of nudity
in the film too, especially from Casini, who spends about sixty
percent of the film naked. She also does that thing we've all done.
You know, when you're on holiday somewhere really hot and can't sleep
due to the heat, so you get up and rub your arse up and down a wall
while groaning erotically.
As well as a lot of nudity, we also get what literally can be termed
'Bongo Fury'. These folks pretty much play the bongos all day and all
night, no matter what they are doing. That voodoo stuff looks a lot
more fun than the Catholic stuff I experienced while growing up. We
never had naked woman writhing about in the dirt. We were just told
we were all going to hell and to not get too close to the priest.
THE GOD SERPENT is kind of good if you like pretty looking
women and good cinematography, but just be warned it does not go in a
direction you'd expect. It looks like Beryl Cunningham also bares her
arse on a beach in the film BLACK
DECAMERON, but I guess there's no way to confirm that other
than watching the film.
Good
News (1979, Italy, "Comedy",
Director: Elio Petri)
Notable
actors: Giancarlo Giannini!
Ennio
Morricone Soundtrack!
Although
he's labelled as, and probably was, a political director always on
the side of the people, Elio Petri's films always seem to me to be
more about men facing dilemmas regarding the changing world and their
inability to change with it, be it through sheer ignorance (Gian
Marie Volonte in THE WORKING CLASS GO
TO HEAVEN), getting life's priorities all wrong (HIS
DAYS ARE NUMBERED) or just basically not having a clue
what's going on at all, with anything, like Giancarlo Giannini in GOOD
NEWS. I must include the caveat here that I might just be
talking out of my arse.*
In Elio Petri's most profane and sexualised film of his career,
Giancarlo Giannini plays a media type. What he does exactly isn't
really gone into in much detail. He does sit around watching six
television screens at once (one always including the news, and I
might be reading too much into it but I swear some of the topics
refer to other Petri films, like the mystery disease in TODO
MODO and political turmoil in the workplace, as in THE
WORKING CLASS GO TO HEAVEN), but it's merely a backdrop as
Giannini sinks into a world of misery due to his various hang-ups and
his marriage to a frigid wife.
He's surrounded by sex but can't have any, despite even trying it on
with a colleague at work, although asking her for advice, dropping
his drawers, and asking if his penis is either too big or too small
doesn't quite break the ice as well as he expected. At night, instead
of paying attention to his wife, he watches television, and as the
film goes on the images get more erotic (if a guy giving himself a
blowjob is erotic to you, that is). He even tries it on with his
wife's cousin on a day out to no avail.
Through all this, and the weird backdrop in which the film is set
(which I'll discuss later), a mystery arises. An old friend of his,
Gualtiero, makes contact after fifteen years as Giannini is his 'best
friend'. Gualtiero thinks people are out to kill him, but somehow,
with all conversations involving Giannini's character, talk turns to
sex, and Giannini finds out that Gualtiero's wife is a nymphomaniac.
Whether this prompts Giannini to help his friend, whom he thinks is
mad, is up to you.
The events of the rest of the film roll out surrounding Giannini
'helping' Gualtiero and his wife Ada (which leads to the most awkward
sex scene I've ever seen in a film), and somehow trying to get
through to his wife. Oh, and watching, always watching, those screens.
The Rome these characters live in is also very strange. There are
constant black-outs. Constant bomb threats at work, which prompts
everyone to go down to the park and play football and eat gelati.
Everywhere, literally everywhere, is covered in trash, either
indicating that there's a lengthy strike going on with the garbage
collection or things in general are breaking down. No character acts
normal either, as if they've all forgotten how to act normal.
It is a comedy mind you, so there are farcical moments, like
Giannini waltzing with Gualtiero, but it's Elio Petri's version of a
comedy, so you know it's going to be off-kilter. I wouldn't say it's
among his best work, but it's still a good film. It's a pity the
version I watched was blurry as hell and fullscreen. However, it IS a
great film if you want to learn loads of Italian swear words, because
there's a whole scene based around Giannini pondering his use of
profanity, so it's "Figa" this and "cazzo" that.
Eeh, the language.
*
I've since discovered that Elio Petri stated the film was about how,
due to the media, people don't actually live life anymore, only
living some kind of fake version of life, and that's what the film is
about. So there you go.
Goodbye
and Amen (1977, Italy, Crime,
Director: Damiano Damiani)
Notable
actors: Tony Musante! Claudia Cardinale! John Steiner! Renzo Palmer!
John Forsythe! Fabrizio Jovine (the priest who kills himself at the
start of City of the
Living Dead)! Luciano Catenacci!
Damiano
Damiani follows his excellent thriller I
AM AFRAID with yet another good one, this time swapping a
justly paranoid Gian Marie Volonte for a calculating Tony Musante in
a film that is mostly hostage drama, but also a study in corruption
and betrayal and the questionable actions of those in authority.
It all starts off like it's going to be really complex too, with the
CIA gathering in Rome to discuss a future operation to overthrow
rulers in some African country and replace them with US-friendly
people. This lot of CIA are led by Tony Musante, an agent on his last
chance with his superiors, with sidekick Renzo Palmer in tow. They,
and others, are keeping an eye on an African dignitary currently
visiting Rome, but then Musante receives news that a rival agent,
Lambert, might be meddling with matters.
We don't initially see Lambert, but we do see his son and wife
watching him drive angrily away following an argument. Later that
night, someone sneaks into Lambert's house and takes a high-powered
rifle, and we soon see that this person is a (thankfully reserved)
John Steiner, who rather nonchalantly heads for a nearby Hilton hotel
and calmly guns down a beggar who was pan handling outside. Then he
guns down a tourist taking pictures, just to make sure everyone gets
the general idea there's a gunman on site.
Steiner also stacks the odds in his favour by taking two hotel
patrons hostage, namely famous socialite Claudia Cardinale and her
lover, some vain actor guy who for some reason answers the door to
Steiner totally naked. The police are soon on site, and after a brief
gun battle where a policeman dies, Steiner starts with his first
demand - three coffees and twelve boxes of cornflakes. The cornflakes
aren't due to some fanatical devotion to cereal, but rather to have
an extra crunchy early warning system outside of the hotel room.
After Lambert's rifle bag is found on the roof, the CIA are sucked
into proceedings, and Musante finds his superiors breathing down his
neck again and Cardinale and Steiner try to outsmart each other, but
is Steiner the agent Lambert, and if he isn't, who is he? And where's Lambert?
I love the Eurocrime films of Lenzi, Castellari, Massi etc, but I
also love the totally different way Damiano Damiani approaches the
genre. His films are more realistic, which makes the sudden outbursts
of violence seem more shocking when they finally arrive. This film
isn't as graphically violent as I AM AFRAID or his later (and
less satisfying but still good) THE
WARNING, relying instead on the various attempts made to get
to Steiner and the clever ways he keeps outsmarting the cops to carry
the film along. His plan to escape is pretty clever - I won't mention
who ends up in the room with him, but he makes everyone dress exactly
the same, wear motorcycle helmets, and hold guns and identical
suitcases in order to confuse snipers.
Guido and Maurizio De Angelis are also old hands at the Eurocrime
genre, and give us a mix of electronic and symphonic tunes on the
soundtrack. As well as a restrained, charming Steiner, we get good
support from Cardinale and Musante, but Renzo Palmer isn't given much
to do. Fabrizio Jovine also stands out as the Italian cop having to
deal with a crazy American shooting people, and the incredulous
machinations of the CIA.
You can't beat a bit of Damiani - the early quasi-giallo RED
LIPS, Ornella Muti's debut THE
MOST BEAUTIFUL WIFE, the unique THE
CASE IS CLOSED, FORGET
IT.
He was one of the true masters of Italian cinema, and yet, there's
so many of his films that are hard to track down.
Great
Hunters (1990, Italy, Action,
Director: Augusto Caminito)
Notable
actors: Harvey Keitel! Klaus Kinski! Roberto Bisacco! Debora Caprioglio!
What's
the worst thing you can encounter out on the plains of Africa? It's
Klaus Kinski. And what's the worst thing you can encounter out on the
permafrost of the Arctic circle? It's also Klaus Kinski. The African
tribesman call him Khoe!arga Igaro! Kenangu, which means "The
one who looks like his features are trying to slide off the bottom of
his face". and the Inuits have twenty names for him, the most
common being Inuvinirnik Takujunga, which translates to "Please
put this bag over your head, you're scaring my children".
But what causes Kinski to occupy two separate hemispheres in the
same film? Well, for the most part, it's because he's trying to
avenge the death of his wife by killing the panther that mauled her,
then it's mainly because while he was in jail for hurting some guys
who were trying to kill the panther he wanted to kill, the panther
died, perhaps of old age. We never find out. What we do know is that
Klaus Kinski is really bad at deciding whether or not he wants to
kill something. By my count I think he had three separate chances to
kill the panther. The first time he just sort of looks at it. The
second time he seemingly decides he needs bigger bullets, and the
third time he actually frees it from some other guys who were trying
to catch the panther.
Apart from dithering about panther killing, Klaus seems to spend a
lot of time drinking and staring into space thinking about his dead
wife Debora Caprioglio (and no, you don't get to see her
jaw-droppingly large assets). He sometimes does this while staring
over a waterfall while a tune eerily similar to the theme tune from BLADE
RUNNER, although sometimes he just does it while at home,
where a strange native woman stares at him and say nothing. Was she
meant to be the panther or something? Who knows. The panther also has
some spooky POV stuff going on that goes nowhere too. It's great that
we're spending so much time with Kinski's character here. I'm just
mentioning that for some reason. Also his character's name is Klaus
Naginsky. You wonder why they even bothered doing that.
Kinski gets sent to jail for blowing up some other hunters and
that's when he's recruited by Roberto Bisacco (from the great TORSO
and the not-so-great THE RAGE WITHIN).
He wants Kinski to head up to the Arctic circle and kill a seal
hunter who murdered a young guy trying to document how brutal fur
trapping is because the police won't do anything about it. Kinski
agrees, his bail is paid, and we spend forever watching him staring
into space, shaving, showering etc, then he heads off into the
tundra, talks to a seal, eats something and then walks off only for a
voiceover to tell us that his character vanished and the search was
called off after three weeks. So, forty minutes of this film is
dedicated to a character who is barely involved in the plot.
I thought Harvey Keitel would have turned out to be the bad guy
here, but instead he's Kinski's replacement, so then we get to watch
HIM travel all the way to Arctic Circle and set up camp too. Plus, it
takes him about five seconds to find Kinski's body (he's under the
ice somehow, possibly murdered, but I'm going to sail right past this
because it raises so many questions about what happens later).
Proving that the title Great Hunters might be a bit optimistic,
Keitel gets attacked by the murderer and his mates and left for dead,
only to be adopted by an Inuit tribe. So the film turns into DANCES
WITH WOLVES, too, I'd imagine as I've not watched that one.
This film sounds like it's about three hours long, and it feels it
too, but it's only one hour forty and I've only described about the
first half. Keitel the actor barely even attempts to do any acting at
all and genuinely looks totally confused about what he's supposed to
be doing, which leads to some funny scenes, especially the bit where
he's in an igloo and an Inuit girl is burping his worm under some
blankets, only for Keitel to worriedly glance around at an old man
who's sitting watching them.
Better still is when Keitel tracks down the bad guy and gives him
Rutger Hauer's speech from the end of BLADE RUNNER! He even
says "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" then
goes on about seal clubbing and it's cruelty. I'm pretty sure the bad
guy would believe him though, seeing as how he was supposed to be a
seal clubber. Lucky for us we don't get to see any real seal
clubbing, just extremely fake seal clubbing, which was also kind of funny.
This weird empty film ends with even more head-scratching dialogue
as Roberto offers Keitel a cigarette to which Keitel replies he quit
ages ago, then asks Roberto if he's quit too, even though Roberto
pulled a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered Keitel one.
Things like that happen all through this film. With most of the film
concerned with either documenting Kinski or Keitel doing menial tasks
or staring at things, a weird BLADE RUNNER fixation, and
almost total lack of action, GREAT HUNTERS isn't even about
great hunters. Kinski was a terrible hunter and Keitel I guess
trained to be a hunter with the Inuits, then went home and never
hunted again.
The cinematography was nice though. No wonder this film is obscure.
The
Great Swindle (1971, Spain/Italy,
Giallo, Director: Jose Antonio Nieves Conde)
Notable
actors: Marisa Mell! Sylvia Koscina! Stephen Boyd! Fernando Rey!
Howard Ross! Massimo Serato! Simon Andreu!
Yet
another old school Giallo of the mind-game type here, with sexy
Marisa Mell, sexy Sylvia Koscina, sexy Fernando Rey, not bad Stephen
Boyd and sexy Howard Ross all taking part in the shenanigans.
Like the film MARTA which was
also directed by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde, and also starred Marisa
Mell and Stephen Boyd and Howard Ross, the viewer doesn't have much
of clue as to what's going on in this one, and this is especially so
in this film as it does not follow a linear plot at all for the first
hour, preferring to jump and back and forth in time to reveal
precisely why the characters on screen are doing what they're doing.
First off, we have a moody-looking Marisa Mell (from other old
school Gialli like ONE ON TOP
OF THE OTHER and THE DEVIL'S RANSOM)
standing on a cliff, staring off into the distance, possibly even
considering suicide. She's unknowingly being watched by painter
Stephen Boyd. Later, he invites himself over to her house and
generally acts in a way that would land him in prison these days, but
back then results in a successful sexual encounter. The next day,
however, Marisa is gone.
Through flashbacks, we begin to learn exactly why Marisa was there.
It turns out she was a high class hooker servicing very rich
businessmen like Fernando Rey, all organised by Sylva Koscina (from SO
SWEET, SO DEAD). Without revealing to much of the plot, I'll
say that all of these people start complicating everybody else's
lives, resulting in people being conned, people being shot, Howard
Ross having an outlandish hairdo and a lesbian bath between Marisa
and Sylvia. Hooray for lesbian baths and all who sail in them!
No blood or gore here, just twists and ulterior motives and Marisa
Mell staring moodily at people, seething with rage. Some nudity
though, especially during a groovy orgy at the home of playboy type
Massimo Serato (from the so-so WHO
KILLED THE PROSECUTOR AND WHY?), where both Sylvia and
Marisa do a striptease, Hooray for stripteases and extra absorbent tissues!
There's not much else to say about this one without spoiling the
plot. The music was pretty good too. A lot of smoking action as well.
Ah, the days when you break the ice with a girl by offering her a
Malboro and flashing your nicotine-stained teeth.
Guapparia
(1983, Italy, Crime, Director: Stelvio Massi)
Notable
actors: Mario Merola! Sal Borghese for about a second! Ria De Simone,
the Opera singing lady from Fulci's Touch
of Death!
Mario
"Versatility" Merola branches out once again by swapping
his usual role as a tough but jovial Neapolitan mobster who drives a
blue Mercedes with that of the role of a tough but jovial Neapolitan
mobster who drives a WHITE Mercedes.
This time around he's not so much getting into trouble via a son or
daughter but it's women that are causing him to cry and sing very
loudly. Merola's out one day at the Madonna de'llArco near Naples (I
looked that up), where pilgrims get blessings by rubbing a huge brass
plaque with their napkins. Merola's there with current girlfriend Ria
De Simone, a struggling actress, when she meets an old friend of
hers, Margherita. Merola's already giving her a bit of the eye while
rubbing that shrine, but there's real sparks in the air when he's
having lunch with both Ria and Margherita, when the locals urge
Merola to grace them with his lovely voice. I'd have been more angry
that people where stopping me eating that nice looking half roast
chicken on my plate, but for Merola it means he can not-so-subtly
hint that Margherita and him might have a future together.
It's not just singing and chicken eating that a Guappo has to do of
a day, because Merola's got to go around sorting out the community's
business, like making sure the theatre company Ria is working for
change the script for her, or making sure that nice boy who knocked
up that girl does the right thing and marries her. He also slaps a
great deal of people, in both aggressive and friendly styles.
Eventually though he gets 'round to Margherita and starts wooing her
and scaring (slapping) off the competition - a local jeweller with
the hots for Margherita. Soon enough all this works and he's giving
Ria the old heave-ho, where she has a flashback to when she met
Merola. One night, Merola got shot while slapping Sal Borghese, and
they fell in love while she tended his wounds. Now he's off and all
Ria can do is have a knife stand off with Margherita in public. If
there's one thing I learned from this film, it's that every single
person in Naples carries a knife.
What Merola doesn't seem to understand is there are two types of
women in the world. Those who like watching tiny men getting slapped
about, and those who take that as an indicator that the person doing
the slapping might be a bit of an asshole. Margherita starts having
doubts almost right away, and when he tries acting the big man with
her, she's having none of it, and that jeweller is back on the scene
- can Mario sing his way out of this one?
Maybe it doesn't matter who directs these. This one is by Stevlio
Massi, but it could well have been by Alfonso Brescia and I wouldn't
have noticed a difference. Most of the usual traits are here -
Naples, food, Merola singing, Merola getting sad, Merola getting
angry, everyone talking at full volume. The only things that are
missing are two kids pretending to be a married couple and the
deafening comedy antics of Luciano Montaldo, who is replace here by
staff in a bar who provide the laughs. There's a bit more singing
than usual I guess, and for some reason his character is more of a
dick than usual.
Would you believe this is the ELEVENTH Mario Merola film I've
watched? The others are NAPLES...9
CALIBRE SERENADE (He's a cigarette smuggler in Naples), THE
LAST GUAPPO (Cigarette smuggling mobster), BIG
MAMMA (Naples - based cigarette smuggling mobster), FROM
CORLEONE TO BROOKLYN (mobster on the run from Maurizio
Merli!), THE SMUGGLERS OF SANTA LUCIA
(you guessed it - cigarette smuggling Naples based mobster), COP,
YOUR LAW IS SLOW...MINE...NOT! (Naples-based mobster running
a gambling den!), NAPLES...THE
COMMORA CHALLENGES, THE CITY HITS BACK (Legit businessman?
Can't remember), THE HOER (A
farmer! This leads to a pretty unintentionally funny finale), THE
MAFIA TRIANGLE (Naples based mobster), and THE
INMATE (middle-aged divorcee who makes an entire prison cry
by singing). I enjoyed most of those, by the way.
Also, I'm now in the Guinness Book of Records because of this,
holding the title of 'World's Saddest Bastard'.
The
Gun (1978, Italy, Crime, Director:
Pasquale Squitieri)
Notable
actors: Claudia Cardinale!
More
of a chronicle of one man's psychological disintegration than a
crime movie, THE GUN does however tell a different side of the
story when it comes to Italy in the 'Years of Lead'. It's not about
cops or criminals, journalists or politicians. It's just about a man
who wants to protect his family while all this goes on, but somehow
manages to prove he's an asshole in the process. Which I believe I
also said about the film A DANGEROUS TOY.
Luigi is the stone-faced protagonist here, distant from his wife
(Cardinale) and a stranger to his teenage daughter. One night a
neighbour alerts police to a break-in happening in their apartment
complex and one of the unarmed burglars is shot dead by the police.
Thinking that society is breaking down, Luigi seeks to arm himself.
The thing is, Luigi becomes obsessed with the gun and thinks it can
solve all his problems, and it also seems to give rise to his less
sociable aspects, thinking that a gun will stop his daughter
attending hippy parties and taking drugs, or heal the broken marriage
between himself and Cardinale. Whereas in A
DANGEROUS TOY, Nino Manfredi's character is a goofy guy who
finds courage weilding a gun and is consumed by it. Luigi was already
an asshole and uses the power the gun gives him to exert his asshole
personality over others.
It kind of reminded me a bit of the Michael Douglas film FALLING
DOWN, although not as extreme. Luigi doesn't seem to realise
that he's dug his own furrow and although he can't control his
aggression, he does regret it. Cardinale does well as the wife who
puts up with his crap, even though Luigi doesn't seem to understand
there's anything wrong at all.
Nicely acted by a small cast, consisting of not much violence but
strangely affective, THE GUN is a nice deviation from the
usual trodden path, with a good musical score chucked in there too.
If I had to compare with A DANGEROUS TOY, I'd say that film is
more enjoyable over this, as the guy who plays Luigi (Stefano Satta
Flores), doesn't display as much depth as Nino Manfredi.
H2S
(1969, Italy, Sci-fi, Director: Roberto Faenza)
Notable
actors: Lionel Stander!
Absolute
arthouse madness from the director of CORRUPT,
starring Lionel Stander? I've got to admit that I watched this
without subtitles, and I don't think it would have made much sense in
English anyway.
The plot involves something to do with sex being banned to stop
world over-population and then something regarding students revolting
against the establishment perhaps. Luckily, plot seems to something
that isn't really focused on here, as the bulk involves lead
character Massimo being put through various insane situations. Like
being strapped to a shagging machine while other students watch,
being put through a kind of car wash with a plastic bag on his head,
being slapped on the arse by a giant book, and entering a room with
loads of tiny statues of liberty while Lionel Stander talks through a
grill hanging from the ceiling.
There must have been some serious acid on the streets of Rome in the
late sixties as this film is a deluge of insane imagery and strange
acting. Lionel Stander looks like he's having the time of his life as
he runs about in a nappy. The film switches from the university to a
mountain at some point, with two students living in a giant pyramid
with an entirely tin-foiled interior. Also, the screen goes black for
about five minutes.
What the use of describing it? I'll just plaster together some
random insanity myself to represent my feelings about the film: Four
geckos playing Mario Kart. A piece of gammon sellotaped to a crying
child in space. An old man playing a keyboard but then his fingers
are sausages and the sound coming out of the piano is that of a tuba.
A huge room where custard drips off the ceiling onto a basketball
team playing rugby with a football team, backwards. The cast of EVERYBODY
LOVES RAYMOND sacrificing a goat to a huge picture of Danny
De Vito's elbow. A microscope driving a wheelchair down an alleyway
while stray cats fart pink steam that forms the word
"Plimsole". Buddha: "Gonnae geez a light,
chief?" Elton John: ("Untranslated Japanese text")
Heaven
Is Only In Hell (1994, Holland,
Horror, Director/Producer/Script/Special Effects/Editing: Wim Vink)
Notable
actors: I don't even know why I typed that.
I
don't mean to be down on very low budget films, because I know that
they face a lot of hardships that big budget films don't have to
bother with. If you're making a low budget film, chances are you are
also supporting yourself in a job, so both free time and money are a
constant problem. Plus, you can't just run out there and bag hotshot
actors like Tom Cruise or Massimo Vanni, can you? However, my problem
with HEAVEN IS ONLY IN HELL is that it's a horror film
consisting of a rather lot of footage of people just living their
lives and doing menial tasks.
In this film of possession and witches, marvel at the sight of two
separate aerobics classes, two different people commuting to work, a
girl switching on items at an electrical store and working on some
administration, a man house-hunting, the same man preparing for a
house-warming party by setting out cheese and wine (and as an
ex-cheesemonger, I'm going all out there to guess that's Gouda those
folk are chowing down on), a woman walking down the street, a guy
working on a car engine, a woman on the subway, a man going to a bar
on the pull, a woman making coffee, a man waking up with a hangover,
and even more administration. It was so exciting my brain was
literally making me do anything else in order to avoid watching this.
I even washed my front door. Who washes their front door, especially
in Scotland, where my front door is washed on a daily basis by the
endless deluge of Scottish weather (Torrential rain, Heavy rain,
Blustery Showers and Light Rain, which these days counts as 'not
really raining')?
The story is that a witch and her daughter are seeking eternal life
and centuries later they seem to invade the brains of two people -
the househunting guy and the shop girl. The house-hunting guy buys a
house in which there's some evil well in the basement, and his mind
starts going as a voice keeps telling him about eternal life and how
he has to give a blood sacrifice in order to obtain said eternal
living. The shop girl suffers from similar dreams, hearing the same
voice and even dreaming about killing someone and lowering them into
the well. Both seek victims, the guy from several bad attempts at
seduction at a bar, the girl from her aerobics class.
Once again, I don't mean to be down on a film that was a labour of
love, but it took me three days to watch this. There's a bit of gore
at the end when someone receives a hatchet to the head, and someone
else impaled on knives, but it's too little too late. Good aerobics
scenes though I guess.
Hercules
(1983, Italy, Fantasy, Director: Luigi Cozzi)
Notable
actors: Lou Ferrigno! William Berger! Sybil Danning! Mirella
D'Angelo! Claudio Cassanelli! Gianni Garko! Brad Harris! Bobby
Rhodes! Delia Baccardo! Franco Garofolo!
I've
said it before and I'll say it again: Luigi Cozzi is a director with
an imagination and drive to equal that of early Peter Jackson or
Eighties James Cameron, but with a budget of a Sensodyne advert. The
result is HERCULES, a fantastic trip of bad effects and insane
design that is one of the most entertaining films to come out of Italy.
Things start as they mean to go on as we get a detailed account of
how the universe started: a disco jug in space explodes and the
pieces form the planets of the solar system. The first beings to
arrive are the gods, who live on the moon. Their leader is Zeus
(Cassanelli), who looks more like Santa Claus designed by Jean Paul
Gautier. Zeus wants a being on earth who can take care of everybody
else, and therefore sends a bit of light down to occupy the body of
baby Hercules.
Things go alright for about ten seconds before evil King Minos'
daughter Ariana (Sybill Danning), her thief Franco Garofolo, and
usurper Gianni Garko steal some sword, slaughter Herc's parents and
try to kill Herc, who is cast unto a river on a boat and escapes as
Gianni Garko just gives up looking for him, before disappearing from
the rest of the film despite being set up as the main bad guy.
Either Hera or Minos (William Berger) are the main bad guys, as Hera
tries to kill Herc constantly (even with green-eyed snakes when he
was a baby). Minos has a minion design robot monsters to kill Herc,
who pop up sporadically throughout the film. This is because Minos is
all into technology and shit, which gives Cozzi the director the
chance to throw in some stop-motion robot monsters that Ferrigno can battle.
The plot eventually gets round to being all about Herc going to save
his future bride from Minos, with his sidekick (and much better
looking) Mirella D'Angelo by his side. On the way, they encounter
bridges and fountains and swords made of rainbows, go to Hell, go
into space to drive a chariot around an asteroid belt, grow giant and
separate Africa from Europe for Bobby Rhodes while Herc throws a lot
of stuff (including himself) into space, like some cosmic fly-tipper.
Add to this stop-motion monsters and ropey cheeseball eighties
effects literally every second, seemingly every destination being in
space (Minos seems to live in the middle of a fog filled crater on a
giant crystal head, up until Herc finds him in the city of Atlantis,
which is also seemingly in space), and a near constant pec-flexing by
Lou Ferringo, and you've got a near unstoppable juggernaut of
greatness that is simply a delight to watch, even if it's sometimes
for the wrong reasons. By that I mean scenes where Herc fights the
bear, which is scenes from the film Grizzly mixed with Ferringo
fighting a guy in a bear suit (I'm not making that up!), which he
promptly throws into space. That bit always cracks me up.
My son, nearly ten, remembers this film from when he watched it back
when he was five. It might be Luigi Cozzi's crowning achievement...if
it wasn't for the sequel!
Hercules,
Samson & Ulysses (1963,
Italy, Fantasy, Director: Pietro Francisci)
Notable
actors: Kirk Morris! Enzo Cerusico!
Hercules
and his catamite Ulysses are in for it this time! They set out to
sort out a simple sea monster problem and end up getting stranded in
the Holy Land instead. Worse still, you don't even get to sea the sea
monster that well! Sort yourself out, Herc.
Herc (rubber glove filled with walnuts Kirk Morris) and Ulysses
(Enzo Cerusico, who'll later get himself in a whole heap of trouble
in the film NO,
THE CASE IS HAPPILY RESOLVED, not to be confused with the
film THE CASE IS
CLOSED, FORGET IT), are seemingly fascinated by this new
land, possibly because they could maybe stretch things out into a
'dirty weekend' scenario now that they've been 'accidentally'
separated from their wives, but things are about to get stupid as
Herc is mistaken for a local steroid-enhanced nutcase who seemingly
doesn't know how to properly clothe himself.
Samson is the name of this fellow, and it sounds like he has had one
'Roid Rage too many, as he's been declared a terrorist by the local
Philistine government. Samson sure loves to stand on higher ground
and throw spears at people, because he does this a lot to the
Philistine army. What he doesn't do is strangle a couple of lions,
because Herc does that. I actually typed 'loins' there originally
instead of 'lions', because maybe deep down I want to see Herc
strangle loins with his bare hands. Or at least a lion (or loin)
tamer with a Herc wig on. Plus, I thought I saw Herc strangle only
one lion, but then they find another one dead in someone's house (?),
so who knows what's happening there.
The Philistine King, who seems to think the best way to command
troops is to kill some of them, has a scheming evil wife that's
always got his ear. I can't remember if it's her that prompts the
huge slaughter in the town that happens in the middle of the film,
but it's all rather violent, with people being stabbed, hung, and
crucified. This makes Samson even more mental than he was before,
while Herc and his mates just get captured. Herc does manage to
convince the King that he's not Samson, and is sent to get the other
muscle-bound moron.
Most people when they meet introduce themselves and shake hands, but
Herc and Samson do it the man's way - by wrapping huge fucking steel
bars around each other. From what I saw Samson was more into it than
Herc, but I believe that's because Herc needed something extra going
on in there, like 'pulling a train' as it were, with Ulysses in the
middle so Herc could donkey punch the little bastard in the back of
the head when he was on his vinegar strokes.
Things pretty much follow the usual plot of these films, but the
battle at the end was pretty epic. You'll feel sorry for the
Philistine army as their King is firing arrows at them from behind
and Herc and Samson are pushing down an entire building on their
heads from the front. Herc's parting speech to Samson is pretty funny
too, because Samson pretty much looks like he hasn't got a fucking
clue what Herc is talking about.
I'm in two minds whether or not to review more sixties Peplum films,
because it's not like I'm treating them seriously, is it? Mind you,
about eight years ago the security guard of the building I worked in
found out that I liked Italian films and told me that him and his
schoolmates used to go to the cinema back then and watch the old
Peplum films, have a good laugh at them, and throw stuff at the
screens, so maybe they were never meant to be taken seriously, eh?
Her
Harem (1967, Italy, Drama/Comedy,
Director: Marco Ferreri)
Notable
actors: Carroll Baker! William Berger! Gastone Moschin! Renato
Salvatori! Michel Le Royer!
Ennio
Morricone Soundtrack...again!
You
know those fake trailers you get on Youtube where a film is recut,
like turning MRS. DOUBTFIRE
into a horror film or SILENCE
OF THE LAMBS into a romantic comedy? Marco Ferreri did that
with his own film!
Initially filmed as a comedy, director Marco Ferreri changed his
mind about the film and edited it to be more of a drama instead, so
what you end up with is something somewhat unique, if not entirely
successful, It also kickstarted Carroll Baker's career in Europe,
where she notched up, by my count, nine Giallo titles (including the
rare THE BODY) and also giving us
the great BABA YAGA,
putting her up there with Edwidge Fenech as Giallo royalty.
Now, the plot of this one will be familiar to those who have watched
some of Baker's Giallo films, because HER HAREM is also a film
where rich people are holed up in an exotic villa somewhere, playing
mind games with each other, but this time, they aren't doing it for
inheritance, or blackmail, or murder, they are doing it for love.
Isn't that nice? The answer turns out to be no, by the way.
Baker plays the rich Margherita (I can't remember what her job was),
who initially wakes up on her wedding day, next to groom Gastone
Moschin a rich industrialist/wanker who can't believe his ears when
Baker tells him that she doesn't want to get married after all.
Moschin pretends to people that he was the one who called off the
wedding in a macho attempt to save face, then storms off. Baker is
unfazed, and seemingly just goes off to hang around with another
lover, lawyer/tosser Gaetano (Renato Salvatori), a reserved mummy's
boy type, whom she just teases a bit. Adding to proceedings is the
arrival of first love, beatnik/prick William Berger, just returned
from Africa with a baby leopard for a pet!
Baker has a bit of complicated love life going on, and regularly
confides in her gay friend Michel Le Royer. He suggests that what
she's looking for is man with all the best qualities of the three
she's been messing around with, but Baker doesn't want that at all -
she wouldn't mind just keeping things the way they are - avoiding
total commitment and living free. However, they both come up with a
plan to get all three suitors in one place, forming a harem, so to
speak, where she can have some fun at their expense.
Heading to Dubrovnik, everyone (including the leopard) meets up at
one of those villas that crop up in these films, and the head games
begin with Baker pretending she called everyone there because she was
ill. Everyone reacts differently when it is revealed she's not - from
Berger's amusement to Gastone's outrage, which grows as Baker toys
further with the 'harem', making them wear signs that proclaim them
'immoral', but this backfires somewhat when the three lovers are
drawn closer in their anger. This first manifests itself in them
pretending to be slaves in a funny scene, but their reactions become
darker as the film goes on.
The subversive element to this film is Baker taking on the role of
the Casanova type, keeping multiple partners which doesn't sit right
with her lovers and probably didn't sit right with the audience
either. Moschin even goes on a rant about how it's acceptable for the
male to act in such a way, but for a woman it is wrong as they are
"physically inferior". You can see how European audiences
would be taken in by Baker the actress. With her hair died raven
black, she makes for quite a strong, driven lead, and quite erotic
too, in a very subtle way. There's no graphic sex scenes, this being
1967, but a lot of scenes are erotically charged. We see Berger
taking nude pictures of her from a distance, but the scene that
struck me most with Baker is when Berger is kissing her feet, and she
stares straight into the camera, a mix of power and pleasure on her face.
Backing up all this stuff is a very strong, colourful cinematography
and a cool Ennio Morricone soundtrack that pretty much sums up the
tone of the film by pitting a soulful jazz saxophone with those
sad-sounding, high-pitched strings he likes to use. Both these
elements help the film along, as things get progressively less light
and more serious as the film progresses. If anything, this film has
brought my attention to director Marco Ferreri, who seems to be quite
revered. The only films of his I've ever heard of are THE
SEED OF MAN and DILLINGER
IS DEAD, and I've already found a copy of THE
SEED OF MAN to watch, so review soon!
Also, if I was Baker I would have just chosen William Berger.
Gastone Mochine? It would be like choosing between a diamond and a
rotten potato.
High
Frequency (1988, Italy, Giallo
[at a stretch], Director: Falerio Rosati)
Notable
actors: Vincent Spano (I don't know if he's well known or not)! David Brandon!
Eleven
year-old Danny has it all. He's in denial about his dad vanishing at
sea, his mother is dating another guy, he's got no mates, spends his
time on a ham radio every day and now there's a guy on there asking
him to tell him about his 'special antenna'. Life couldn't be happier.
Luckily it's an actual antenna the guy is talking about, and this
guy way over on the Alps is working in a satellite relay station that
seems to be providing Europe with Prince videos and boxing. Peter's
the guy's name, and when not fixing signals and talking to kids he's
outside playing his drums in the snow or feeding his pet rabbit.
While he and Danny are watching a boxing match, Peter somehow
stumbles upon a secret channel with a fixed camera and witnesses
someone being murdered. With no clue as to where this has happened
and the Atlantic Ocean between them, Peter and Danny have to figure
out who committed the murder.
Adding as sense of urgency to proceeding is the discovery that what
Peter was watching was happening live and being broadcast via a fixed
camera, and that there's a lady in the apartment who doesn't seem to
know she might be the next victim...
Enough plot, however. This is a giallo in a very loose sense of the
word. There's no gory murders and no nudity, but we've got a kid with
a childhood trauma, and a musician guy trying to figure out clues
using images. The slight problem with this is it's hard to sustain
suspense between two people nowhere near a murder, one of which lives
on top of a mountain. The director does try his best however, even
though everything's a bit tame, and does manage to bring it together
in time for the ending. It's a little overlong though.
One thing I did notice is that actress Isabelle Pasco is one of the
least emotive actors I've ever seen. Her expression is completely
blank through the film, so I have no idea what her character was
thinking at any time. Oh well. Not an essential film, but more of a
film you'd use to pass a lazy afternoon or perhaps fool family
members into thinking you've gone completely insane, especially if
you invite them over to watch it while naked and acting like a
screaming chimpanzee with a scat fetish. It worked for me, and now
I'm saving a fortune this Christmas!
His
Days Are Numbered a.k.a. On
Borrowed Time (1962, Italy, Drama, Director: Elio Petri)
Notable
actors: Salvo Randone is a guy I've seen in dozens of films, but this
is the first time I've bothered to learn his name. For shame, me!
They
say youth is wasted on the young, and judging by the vast amounts of
time my kids waste playing Fortnite or looking at videos on Tik Tok
(whatever that is), that saying is true. They should be doing
something more productive, like watching sixty year-old Italian films
while drinking beer, like me.
That muddled and confusing first paragraph was supposed to tie in
with theme of Elio Petri's second film, where a middle-aged plumber
witnesses a man of a similar age die of a heart attack on a bus in
Rome. This gives the plumber (played by Salvo Radone) a bit of a
wake-up that he could go at any time, so he quits his job and heads
out into the world...to find out he doesn't really know what to do
with himself.
That just about the plot, as Radone impulsively wanders around Rome
trying to find some sort of reason for existing, be it lost loves,
his birthplace, begging for cash and even turning to crime at one
point, but all carried out in a confused, half-arsed manner, as if
deep down he doesn't quite believe he deserves anything more than
what he's already got. The whole thing kind of reminded me of George
Orwell's "Coming Up For Air", although Radone's character
is much more likeable than the selfish protagonist of that book.
I'm making it all sound a bit dull, but it's all carried out in that
Elio Petri fashion where everything is slightly off, like Radone
going to a shanty town and witnessing people burning piles of debris
while being interviewed about a tick infestation (symbolism lost on
me, by the way - I just enjoy these films, but I don't ever have any
great insight into them). There's a visual theme running through the
film too of black and white stripes - be it road markings, art, or on
the clothing people wear. A reference to the prison Radone is trapped
in, no doubt, tied in with a visit to zoo to see the animals in their
cages. Maybe I'm wrong. Who knows?
It's not top tier Elio Petri but like everything I've seen by him,
it's unique and well worth a watch. Elio Petri himself didn't even
make it to the age of the character Radone plays in this film - he
died at the age of fifty-three. Whether or not he died on a bus,
we'll never know.
Hit
Squad (1976, Italy, Eurocrime,
Director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Tomas Milian! Massimo Vanni! Robert Webber! Nello Pazzafini!
First appearance of Bombolo - get used to him!
Guido
and Maurizio De Angelis Soundtrack!
Inspector
Giraldi is back in a film that eerily resembles the first film, but
is even more entertaining! More costume changes! More mouse action!
More Milian running around in his underwear!
This time around he's trying to sort out a car stealing ring (and
gaining a girlfriend in the process) and yet again a bunch of petty
crooks ripping off a much more serious and deadly crooks which
results in many bad guys getting killed and Milian having to adopt
many guises in order to get to the bottom of what's going on. My
favourite of this is when he tricks the recently widowed girlfriend
into bed, but then also convinces her that he can't make it unless
she shouts out the names of all her dead boyfriend's mates. This of
course results in Milian shouting "What the fuck are you doing
talking like that in front of a woman, asshole?" to two guys who
interrupt him.
Other brain damaging goings on involve Milian's dumb but
well-meaning sidekick Massimo Vanni, who isn't very smart but at
least is very handy with a gun, which is good because the film
doesn't skimp on the usual Eurocrime violence we all expect from
these films. That's what is good about these Giraldi films - there's
a certain comedic element about it all, but it still delivers. So
you'll get to see many a punch up, car chase, and shoot out as well
as Milian dancing badly and threatening dorty porvorts.
You also get Milian forcing Bombolo to eat his own shit, and a
bizarre detour in the last fifteen minutes when the action switches
to New York and Milian romancing a maid. Throughout the film you'll
either be charmed by Milian's weird behaviour or just outright hate
it. I was entertained.
In fact, the funniest moment here is when Milian goes to New York
and when talking to his cop cousin there, they are interuppted by a
hobo dressed in what looks like wax paper. This encounter is so
random and comes across as so genuine that I thought it was a random
moment with a homeless guy they put into the film (Milian even bursts
out laughing at one point), but it turns out it was just a great
performance by some obscure actor called Taylor Mead. Well done
Taylor - you cracked me up.
How many Giraldi films is that I've reviewed Fred? Is it enough for
you to free my family, because it gets confusing here as the films
are all called Anti Squad - something or other? You're going to make
me watch them all, aren't you? (You have reviewed six of them. If
you ever want to see your family again, you better deliver on all
eleven films! - Fred) And that Bud Spencer film CAT
AND DOG or whatever it's called.
House
No. 13 (1991, India, Horror,
Director: A. G. Baby)
There's
probably notable actors, but I can't be bothered checking.
Now,
I've watched a lot of horror films and witnessed a lot of strange
deaths, like the kid killed by a washing machine in Umberto Lenzi's HOUSE
OF LOST SOULS, but I have never ever watched someone be
killed by the Mona Lisa's hair before. That happens in HOUSE NO. 13,
a kind of Bollywood POLTERGEIST,
with songs!
Cable TV back in the late nineties used to have a couple of
Bollywood channels - Zee TV being the only one I can remember the
name of, and when sufficiently stoned and/or drunk enough, it was
nice to watch a Bollywood action movie. The cheap action scenes were
always a laugh, and the songs were always earnest and charming. This
practice kind of fell by the wayside when I started getting into
Italian films more (and stopped smoking hash), so it's been twenty
years since I watched a Bollywood film. I picked a haunted house film
due to me knowing only two words in Hindi, and most haunted house
films generally follow the same path.
After a prologue that features a creepy girl scaring the crap out of
an artist, a multi-generational family move into a new house. From
what I can gather this house was previously own by a relative
(perhaps an Uncle), which would explain why there's a tearful
middle-aged woman there. Apart from her, the family are made up of
the elderly grandad, the mum and dad (who is a doctor), the older son
and the young daughter. The haunted house gets to work right away by
doing a bit of curtain twitching while the family are outside, then
sets its sights on the old man.
No-one believes the old man when he starts claiming that the mirror
in his room if filling up with smoke, so it's a pity later when the
replica Mona Lisa picture above his bed starts growing real hair in
huge tendrils and strangles the poor fellow. This is written off as a
heart attack when the family find him later, but this ghost isn't
happy with just one corpse. She wants loads!
While that's happening, there's also a budding romance between the
son and a local girl (he saves her from being raped in a badly-stage,
funny punch up). This is where the songs in the film come in, as
instead of endless scenes of onscreen chemistry, the two love birds
have a bit of a song and a dance instead, which I've got to admit is
much more entertaining. For the record, the third song features some
Mariachi trumpet and a guitar solo for variety.
Love is in the air and scares are in the house as the ghost sets its
sights on the kid, making a doll come alive and lure the kid in with
some antics before stretching its arms right across the room and
trying to strangle the kid. When this doesn't work, the ghost flags
down the doctor to help with a sick relative before spending rather a
lot of time scaring the crap out of him, tricking him into finding
the houses secret creepy bit, and scaring him to death. This also
leads to the most confusing and hilarious parts of the film.
For reasons I can't fathom out, the son of the family becomes
involved in a chase sequence where he has to track down and attack
four guys who are driving a truck. I'm not sure why this happened but
it might have something to do with grave-robbing. Who knows, but it
does lead to some pretty funny shots as the son somehow manages to
catch up with this truck by kind of driving down a hill, running down
a hill, and kind of stumbling down a hill, where he fights the guys
on the truck, and some pretty lame wirework pulls them into the air
and onto the ground. It's hard to describe the disjointed madness of
this scene, but it did make me chuckle.
The romance bit leads to a marriage bit which leads to the wife
being pregnant for over tenth months, which prompts the family to get
a Hindu holy man involved. Things get a bit more urgent when the
ghost steals the young kid away to the afterlife, prompting a POLTERGEIST-style
rescue mission into the houses creepy zone, complete with angry
plants, floating kids, and giggling ghosts. I also must admit that
both my wife and kids were fucking milling about the place by this
point and ruining the atmosphere of the film when they should have
been either sleeping or watching whatever it is they show on Netflix
(I'm guessing re-runs of Scottish cop show TAGGART?).
Director A.G. Baby seems to know how to keep the right balance
between the scares, the songs, and the punch-ups, so what you get
here is an extremely low budget horror film that pretty much delivers
the goods if you're willing to cut the film a bit of slack. Baby uses
a lot of Italian influence here - a lot of gel-lighting, just like
Bava and Argento.
Note: There are two versions on Youtube just now - one is
terrible, like trying to watch a film through cataracts, and the
other is fine, but ten minutes shorter. None have subtitles, so good luck!
House
of Love...The Police Intervene
(1977 [possibly 1973], Italy, Horror?, Director: Renato Polselli)
Notable
actors: I'll get back to you on that.
This
film is so disjointed, cobbled together and forgotten about that no
one can even agree on which year it was made. Plus, Renato Polselli
has totally pulled a Godfrey Ho on this occasion by taking an old
unused horror film called A VIRGIN FOR SATAN and intercutting
footage of his own in there, creating a huge pile of crap that at
least has some of that old Polselli randomness we've come to expect
by now.
The copy of HOUSE OF LOVE that I watched looked like how the
world probably looks to an old dog before it finally goes blind, had
no subtitles, and seem to have hardcore footage removed from it, so
it was pretty hard to follow. It does seem that the film starts off
with three young archaeologists out in the field, looking for stuff,
when one of them spots two strange men kidnapping a young woman in
what looked like a giant net and throwing her in the boot of a car.
One guy drives off, but the top-hatted, sinister fellow left behind
ominously follows the girl who witnessed the kidnap, seemingly
teleporting around the place and intimidating her. Then, he just
leaves and our young trio follow.
The trail leads them to a house where various dodgy looking people
are arriving, including a woman with a goat on a leash. Through the
window, they see the kidnapped girl being forced to take part in some
ceremony to praise the demon Astaroth (and apparently have a rubber
hand stuffed in her mouth(?)), but when the two girls suggest that
they call the police, the archaeologist guy says "bollocks to
that - this would make a great news story" and runs off to get
some weird equipment to spy on the ceremonies within. I can't
remember if this was before or after he interrupted the girl's game
of darts(?) to erotically rub a huge tree branch all over one of them
while she writhed about sexily. You can kind of understand why I'm
having trouble explaining this.
Basically, the footage of the trio comes from Polselli (as if that
needed pointing out) and the inside footage is from the old film,
which means that our trio spy on everything happening inside and
follow people about outside, mainly the guy in the top hat, who
disposes of the bodies of the various girls who are kidnapped and
used up in the old demonic nonsense going on indoors. There's another
sub plot involving a potential victim who escapes the ceremony and
goes to the police, but regardless of whether or not that's old or
new footage, it's just there to pad out the running time.
For those seeking some of that old Polselli madness, there is the
odd thing like another scene of tree based erotic massage and a scene
at the end where two men throw live chickens at each other, but this
film is mainly dull. Maybe the hardcore bits livened it up a bit, but
mostly it involves people spying on some people having a demonic
ceremony for almost the whole film. Poor show.
The
House of Ripe Apples (1971,
Italy, Drama, Director: Pino Tosini)
Notable
actors: Erika Blanc! Carla Mancini, probably!
This
film has the giallo keyword attached to it on the IMDb, which is why
I watched it, but even I, who would consider anything a giallo*
if it prevented me from having to make an effort, would be stretching
things by calling this a giallo. I suppose there's a childhood
trauma/repressed memory thing going on, and it's definitely sleazy
enough, but there's no mystery and no mind games getting played. It's
still pretty watchable though.
First things first though - also on the IMDb, Erika Blanc is listed
as playing one of the main characters here, but that's not true. In
fact, Erika only appears for about five minutes of screen time. Carla
Mancini is listed as playing 'nurse', but that's the only role here I
can confirm she's not playing, but she could be one of the asylum
inmates though. To be honest, there are about a dozen people here who
could have been Carla Mancini.
THE HOUSE OF RIPE APPLES is kind of a mix of drama and women
in prison, but played ultra-seriously. It involves two friends who
have grown close because they have spent mutual time together in a
mental hospital. First off is Judy, played by Marcella Michelangeli
from crappy Eurocrime film COULD
IT HAPPEN HERE?, but is listed on the IMDb as playing the
other main character, Marsina, who is played by Susanna Levi from the
sequel to nothing HOLOCAUST 2.
I can't believe I spent so much time sorting all that out. Judy is
basically incarcerated because she's sullying the family name by
partying and hanging around with left-wing types, and Marsina is in
there because a repressed childhood memory of being raped as a kid
keeps trying to break through her mind. It's a buddy movie!
Judy gets released when her slimy, uncaring brother gets her out
while also obtaining power of attorney over her, and luckily Marsina
has a caring husband who wants her to get better, but it's obvious
the Judy is in love with Marsina and Marsina has serious sexual
hang-ups. Both of them suffer from a bad case of the flashbacks too,
most of them involving sex, and all of the involving body doubles who
don't resemble the actresses at all!
Things go smoothly for a few seconds before both attend a party
hosted by Erika Blanc, which results in Marsina having a flashback/meltdown
and Judy shaming her family again, so both of them end up in a much
harsher asylum, where the nurses are much more brutal. The girls
escape, but Marsina's flashbacks result in them being thrown back in
there, but the real problems start when the ladies are separated...
Whenever things threaten to turn stale in this film, director Pino
Tosini (who has a lot of interesting sounding films that have no
reviews and barely any information) throws in some nudity and sex.
There's plenty of drama too, as Judy descends into madness in what
must be the most badly managed insane asylum in cinema. Marsina
herself goes on a personal journey to overcome her bad memories, and
unless I missed something, she did this by going to a park and
looking at a dog.
The short runtime suggests there might have been porn inserts in
this one at some point, but the short run time also meant that I
didn't mind spending time watching it. I could have done with less
naked male buttock action though. I get enough of that in my part
time job as a middle-aged male prostitute!
*Other
films I consider giallo - GREMLINS
2: THE NEW BATCH, ONLY
YESTERDAY: THE CARPENTERS' STORY, SPICE
WORLD, GANDHI
and *batteries not included.
The
Hunchback (1961, Italy, Eurocrime,
Director: Carlo Lazzani)
Notable
actors: Pier Paolo Pasolini!
Way
back before Tomas Milian stuck it to the man in Umberto Lenzi's BROTHERS
TILL WE DIE, another hunchback criminal was not only a pain
in the Roman police forces' arse, but also stuck it to the Nazis at
the same time. This hunchback is working for the partisans, but he's
really out for himself.
The Nazis, being Nazis, just arrest anyone who is a hunchback at
all, but THE Hunchback hates that, and takes it upon himself to waste
the German invaders and release the prisoners. He's also got beef
with the Chief of the Militia, and while the Chief hunts the
Hunchback, the Hunchback forces himself on the Chief's daughter,
starting a pretty complicated relationship.
While stealing munitions from a Nazi camp in a very well-constructed
action scene, the Hunchback takes a slug to the leg and with the help
of a kid, heads to the only place he figures the Germans won't look -
the house of the Militia Chief. There, the daughter reluctantly takes
care of him, and seemingly forgives him, because they fall in love
and she falls pregnant. The Hunchback however proves to be a bit
unreliable - the Chief uses the Hunchback's scarf to make him out to
be a Nazi collaborator, and the Hunchback guns him down in revenge.
Eventually the Hunchback does get caught, but does he turn in his
mates for freedom, and how will he react to the news that the
daughter has had an abortion? This all happens in the first
forty-five minutes of the film, by the way.
The second half of the film takes place after the Allied Forces have
run the Germans out of Rome, and how most of the characters that have
survived this far into the film are coping with life - the daughter,
being the daughter of a Nazi collaborator, is forced into
prostitution while the Hunchback doesn't want to give up a life of
crime, but may still try to find a way to save his soul...
After sitting through some meandering Carlo Lazzani films (SAN
BABILA
- 8 P.M., for example) I'm surprised by how fast-paced this
one is, and how violent it is for a film from nineteen-sixty. The
Hunchback is a character who wouldn't be amiss in a mid-seventies
Umberto Lenzi or Fernando De Leo film, a messed up orphan who grew up
learning violence is the answer to everything, and yet he's not a
totally evil character. His on/off relationship with whatever her
name was is complicated and not entirely his fault, as both are
victims of circumstance in a war that's been forced upon them.
The action scenes are filmed immaculately in this one. Modern films
could learn that jackhammer editing and overloud music isn't the way
to go - sometimes less is more. Look out for notorious director Pier
Paolo Pasolini, a man who died in Giallo-like circumstances in real life.
In
An Old Manor House Or The Independence of Triangles
(1984, Poland, Horror, Director: Andrzej Kotkowiski)
Notable
actors: Beata Tyszkiewicz (She was also in the 'Battle of Sexes'
sci-fi comedy Sexmission that I
remember watching back in the late Eighties as a kid! Now, if only
someone could remember the name of the film set in a brothel where
one of the customers was a serial killer who kidnapped women and took
polaroid pictures of them slowly starving to death. That wasn't even
part of the main plot of that film, which has alluded me for years.
Maybe I should ask director David Fincher, who totally stole that
polaroid bit for Se7en).
Now,
we all know that in Gothic horror being dead is like having the
common cold, and that after a few days you can just shrug it off and
go back to that old draughty castle you live in, but this film takes
that to the extreme. Nominally a scary story about revenge from
beyond the grave, IN AN OLD MANOR HOUSE also covers the
dynamics of the family, the class system, failed ambition, parenthood
and probably a lot of other stuff that went right over my head.
The film entirely takes place in our around a run-down Manor House
where an aging businessman runs his empire. Anastazja, his second
wife, is much younger and has the hots for her stepson Jerzy, upon
whom the film mainly focuses on. The old man has two daughters by
Anastazja too, who mainly live in their own little world, giggling at
everything, including the fact that Jerzy is in the woods somewhere
with his head jammed between Anastazja ample fat rascals.
The old man (whose name I wish I'd taken note of), shoots Anastazja,
and weirdly there doesn't seem to be any consequences to this, which
is perhaps a dig at the upper classes getting away with murder. He
settles down for a new life by sending for his cousin Aneta, who has
recently become widowed herself and has fond childhood memories of
hanging around with Jerzy. Jerzy on the other hand is a mess. He was
already a failed artist and poet, and his main inspiration is now
dead...for a wee while.
At this point in the film I wasn't sure what to expect, as I
randomly chose to watch this film on the Movies For Nothing channel
on YouTube (be quick - the films are starting to get deleted), so
when Anastazja appeared during a dinner party and sat herself down
like nothing had happened, the film took a sudden left turn into the
weird, and got weirder as it went on. Anastazja admits she was dead,
and even met Aneta's husband, but now she's back, seemingly to avenge
herself on the old man and Jerzy.
Another strange aspect of the film is how everyone just kind of
accepts Anastazja is back and tries to work around it, as she reveals
she didn't love Jerzy but was in love with the old man's most
cherished employee. Jerzy is the most needy character, emotionally,
and instead of falling back in with Anastazja, she persuades him to
go after Aneta, while she convinces her two daughters to drink
cyanide. This is made even more surreal by the kids dancing around
while a narrator sings a song about how they will shortly die...for a
day or so.
Things pretty much carry on in this fashion, with Anastazja taking
her revenge on various people and killing them (slightly) while Jerzy
falls in love with Aneta, who is then revealed to have a lover.
Everyone kind of knows that Anastazja is the main problem, and Jerzy
comes to the conclusion he has to kill her again, but how do you kill
someone who just keeps coming back? Things get even stranger as Jerzy
shoots Anastazja out in the woods, and as she falls to the ground
dead someone else digs themselves out of the ground, only to be
revealed as Jerzy's hitherto unknown son! This too is accepted
without much contest from everyone in the household...
It's obviously some sort of piss-take, this film, and a swipe at the
rich, but there's still a lot of horror elements in there too, mainly
from Anastazja and the use of mirrors throughout the film. Anastazja
often appears reflected in them to talk to Jerzy, who paints over one
at some point. Even the mysterious son using one to direct sunlight
about a room he's sitting in. In fact, as the film progresses
Anastazja becomes more and more sinister. Luring a drunk guy to his
death while standing on water, walking out of a painting to speak to
Jerzy, sitting silently with her two dead children. It's quite effective.
An interesting film, this one. Maybe a little talky, but as an
Eighties gothic horror which is also some sort of social commentary,
it worked for me.
Ingrid
on The Street (1973, Italy,
Crime, Director: Brunello Rondi)
Notable
actors: Janet Agren! Franco Citti! Bruno Corazzari! Enrico Maria
Salerno! Luciano Rossi! Franco Garafolo! Fulvio Mingozzi!
Before we begin, let's have a little quiz. What do you think happens to Luciano Rossi in this film? Is it:
A) He enjoys an evening meal with Janet Agren where they discuss the fragility of interpersonal relationships
B) He trains a junior soccer team to take on a team made up of rich middle class spoiled kids, or is it
C) He gets a large clump of hair pulled out the back of his head, has his face forced into a bowl of shit over and over again, and then has his tongue cut out?
Answer
at the end of the review.
When she's suddenly raped by her father (Fulvio Mingozzi), Finnish
girl Ingrid (Janet Agren) high tails it out of there and heads for
Italy on what must be a particularly long train journey. On the way
there, she discards her knickers and declares that she'll never wear
any ever again, deciding to become a prostitute. She's rather
proactive in this decision, taking on two separate customers on the
way to Rome. For the record we do see her wearing underwear later in
the film, but then we all make promises to ourselves that we break, right?
INGRID ON THE STREET starts off like a light-hearted, almost
arthouse depiction of a girl getting into prostitution, as Ingrid
quickly makes a friend in Claudia, who takes her under her wing.
Claudia is loud and shrill but good hearted, and nowhere near as loud
and shrill as a character we'll meet later in the film. She also
lives with eccentric artist Bruno Corazzari, who paints gory pictures
with bleeding dolls stuck to them. Ingrid is entering an uncertain
world where everything is borderline surreal, including some of her customers.
She doesn't have much luck at first (Claudia says she's too perfect
looking), but then a customer picks both her and Claudia up and takes
them home. The customer is Enrico Salerno, a charming, humble old man
who sets them both up in his living room, showing them pictures of
his ancestors and giving them antique clothes to wear, but then the
girls realise that there's a seance going on next door that they seem
to be indirectly involved in, and that there's an apparition
appearing at one end of the room!
This off-kilter tone remains in place for the entire film, but the
mood of the film changes dramatically in the second half, with the
appearance of Claudia's pimp, Franco Citti. Not only is Franco smug
and arrogant, he's also psychotic and leads a group of neo-Nazi
bikers with him everywhere he goes, who kiss his feet and treat him
almost religiously. This includes henchman Franco Garafolo. If you
shoved Franco Citti and Klaus Kinski into one of those teleporters in
Cronenberg's THE FLY and mixed
their DNA, Franco Garafolo would be what crawled out of the other teleporter.
Claudia is subservient to the mad Citti, but Ingrid hates him on
sight and sets up the rest of the film, where the two have a
tit-for-tat grudge with each other that leads to rape, drugs, murder,
church-organ playing, and Franco Citti yelling and screaming and
chewing the scenery. He maybe could have learned a thing from Salerno
or Corazzari, who both play eccentric characters in a very restrained fashion.
This film isn't exactly sunshine or rainbows, and certainly a bit
bi-polar in tone, but the weird set design (including tunnels full of
stolen loot and that old Seventies staple, the mannequin), the odd
set-pieces and the sudden exploitative violence make it an
interesting watch, but not something you'd watch more than once.
The answer of course to the multiple choice question is C,
although I may add that Rossi probably did have his hair pulled out
for real, used real shit in the bowl, and really had his tongue cut
out. That's dedication to your chosen craft!
In Search Of The Titanic (2004, Italy, Kids, Animation, Director: Kim Jun Ok)
The
stuff of nightmares, IN SEARCH OF THE TITANIC is thankfully
the last in the micro-sub-genre of Italian cartoons with talking
animals based around the sinking of the Titanic. It's also the
weirdest one, which by default makes it the best one. Still, you'd
only show it to children you hate.
Three years after the events of LEGEND
OF THE TITANIC (1999; where a giant octopus threw an iceberg
at the Titanic, but then saved everyone on board through guilt), our
loving couple Elizabeth and Don Juan, plus their talking dog Smile,
plus the two rats from the first one, all descend in a bathysphere to
find the sunken ship. Unfortunately, there's a bunch of gangster
sharks down there who are in cahoots with the bad guy from the first
film who make the vessel sink to the bottom of the ocean. But not
before hurting the viewer bad with a rapping shark song.
The giant octopus from the first one then arrives to save them but
can't, so it's down to the folks of Atlantis to help the
humans/dog/rats. This is where the film starts getting weird, as
everyone is taken to Atlantis, which is ruled by a king with no face
who has a throne with a big face on it that follows him around and a
group of counsellors made up of a red dolphin, some sort of hybrid of
a sting ray and an otter, and something that looks like Zebedee from
the Magic Roundabout, only like a fish and also gay, and if you think
I'm just saying that, you should see the musical number and many
outfit changes this character goes through.
Also inhabiting Atlantis are a bunch of living toys that share a big
room and join Zebedee in a musical number that made my mind try and
break free from its moorings before blurting out that our heroes are
trapped in Atlantis forever, which they take very well before the
plot lurches onto some sort of rebellion happening involving rats
(one of which sounds like Fu Manchu), the sharks from the start of
the film, and the bad guy from the last film. Before you know it
there's a huge battle where no one gets hurt.
This badly animated seemingly made-up-on-the-spot crap is good for a
laugh once the film stops making any sense at all, especially the
hilarious looking walking throne which the King magics across the
room for no real reason. It attracts a lot of hate on the IMDB, as it
'disrespects those who died in the Titanic', making me wonder what
these people would feel if they watched any of Italy's
Nazisploitation films.
Plus, one person points out the goof that cannonballs won't fire
underwater as the gunpowder would get wet. Really? They're okay with
the talking animals, the octopus that acts like it needs a full-time
carer, the talking screwdriver that appears out of nowhere, the
praying mantis the size of the Titanic, the disturbing scene with the
rats in an asylum, the squelching noises the king makes as he walks
about underwater, the conveyer built pavement system in Atlantis, the
Scottish artillery guy dressed in drag, but has to point out that
tiny scientific fact that got looked over? What a fanny.
I need to get a better hobby.
Insult
To The Mafia (1973, Italy,
Crime/Musical, Director: Ettore Maria Fizzarrotti)
Notable
actors: Mario Merola! Silvia Dioniso! Dada Gallotti!
Amount
of seconds that pass before we see someone eating pasta in this
film: 50
This is where the MMU (Mario Merola Universe as we ultra-fans call
it) starts. This is Merola film number twelve for me, and I was
shocked to find that it wasn't set in Naples. Just...slightly down
the road from Naples a bit. Other than that, it pretty much maps out
the tried and tested formula we'll be getting from here on out, in
this bizarre mix of crime and drama and music and screaming and
slapping known as sceneggiata.
Amount
of seconds that pass before we hear Mario Merola singing: 119
In the seaside town of Cerata on the Amalfi coast, an arrogant
guappo called Andrea makes innocent fisherman Mario Merola drive him
to a restaurant, where the man Andrea's wife has been cheating on is
enjoying his evening meal. He also makes Mario go into the restaurant
and get the guy to go out into the street so he can shoot him in the
guts. Now, I've read a plot summary of this film that states that
Andrea frames Mario for the murder, but what he really does is just
hand the gun to Merola, who just stares at it like he's never seen
one before as the police turn up.
Amount
of scenes featuring people eating pasta of some kind, or even just
pretending to eat invisible pasta: 4
Seven years later, Mario is freed from jail as someone's been
pulling strings in the background, but Mario doesn't care about that
and just wants to go back to work. His best mate Peter is over the
moon to have Mario back on the streets, as all he's had to do in the
meantime is strike up a deep and meaningful relationship with the
innocent Silvia Dioniso (who appears in the Maurizio Merli
face-puncher FEAR IN THE CITY,
where she strips off for Maurizio while he just sits there fully
clothed, smoking and drinking Scotch. They call that 'poliziotesschi
foreplay'). Peter and Silvia makes eyes at each other all the time
and secretly exchange marriage vows in the local Chapel. where Merola
just wants to get on with things.
Amount
of songs Merola sings, sometimes to the sea (which sings back!) and
sometimes while knocking over loads of wine bottles for no reason: 5
Deep down Merola knows he's been let out for a reason, and that
reason soon comes looking for him. Andrea wants to use him in his
smuggling operation, but it may just be a complicated ploy to have
him killed so he can't blame Andrea for killing that guy back then.
Too complicated if you ask me, seeing that Andrea just flat out kills
two other people without any planning and pretty much right out in
the open. There's a whole load of other crap going on too, from Peter
having an affair with Andrea's wife to internal politics and double
crossing in the Mafia, to the Mafia putting the squeeze on folks
working at the docks, and my favourite part, where Merola has a huge
fight in a fish market and ends up dumping huge amounts of fish and
clams onto his assailant, ending with an octopus to the face. That
scene couldn't have been more Southern Italian if it tried.
Amount
of times Merola slaps people across the face with almost superhuman
strength: Three.
So, all the elements of the Merola Universe are here, give or take.
Close families (Merola, Peter, Peter's mother and the two comedy
sidekicks get together at Christmas and have...spaghetti), Comedy
sidekicks (they haven't discovered ultra-loud, screamy Lucio
Montanaro yet, so they have two old men instead, and we spend way too
much time with them), scheming guappi, tragedy and much weeping, food
and coffee, the love of the Naples region and it's people, punch-ups
and wine, smuggling and poverty. All that's missing is Merola's blue
Mercedes and two street kids who argue like a married couple.
Amount
of songs Merola sings about how he's disappointed his son is ashamed
of him while looking like he hasn't slept for three weeks and had ten
tonnes of horseshit dumped on him: None (that was in the film ZAPPATORE,
but it was so funny I had to mention it again).
To conclude, this film couldn't have been a success, as Merola
didn't make another film until five years later.
In
the Highest Of Skies (1977,
Italy, Horror?, Director: Silvano Agosti)
Notable
actors: The only one I recognise is Francesca Romana Coluzzi from the
TV series Rome and Red
Sonja, which I now see is a part-Italian production, and
therefore goes on the never-ending Watch list!
Art
as horror here, or horror as art. The human condition laid bare,
perhaps. The human centipede as a metaphor for how Subway is good in
theory but not good in reality. Umberto Lenzi strangling a goat to
impress some girls at a beach while Ruggero Deodato does press-ups to
do the same, his crotch covered in sandpaper that scrapes away the
delicate skin of an otter nailed to the ground beneath him. I'm
Professor John M. Dober, Head Film Bufter of the Department of
Critical Analysis and Talking Bollocks About Film, University of
Gowkthrapple, Scotland, and I'm here to talk shite about Silvano
Agosti's IN THE HIGHEST OF SKIES (Or IN THE HIGHEST OF HEAVENS...maybe).
Sometimes, one must rise above the material presented and try to
objectively view the intention of the artist. IN THE HIGHEST OF SKIES
is a comment on something, but one struggles to focus on what that
particular something is. Before we dribble our word-noodles into the
Ramen of the void, let us establish just what we are focussing our
brain-lasers on.
The film involves a group of people travelling to the Vatican to
meet the Pope, this group representing what in the director's mind
must be a contemporary slice of Italy's Years of Lead: Some priests,
some industrialists, some nuns, a journalist (a film critic no less),
a nuclear family, and a Marxist. They come bearing gifts for the Pope
- bespoke Eucharist, fancy wine, and other superfluous crap. What
none of them are expecting is that the clinical elevator they have
just embarked on will endlessly ascend to the heavens, causing
everyone aboard to revert to their primitive urges and discard the
ersatz vestiges of modern society to satisfy their base instincts.
Panic sets in rather quickly, and our captives desperately try to
find a way to escape the elevator, via the door and the roof, but to
no avail. Desperation comes next, and I must point out that the
entire film's soundtrack is set to the Vatican Cable Radio that plays
endlessly into the confined space (including some no doubt illegally
acquired Frank Zappa, namely the George Duke performances from 'Eat
That Question' and 'Blessed Relief').
One person decides to go insane early and tries to strangle a nun,
resulting in him being bludgeoned by what my hazy Catholic upbringing
tells me what might be some sort of tabernacle. This is just the
beginning of the horror, as everyone involved languishes in the
endless purgatory, one priest gets the idea to hump the young girl
that's been brought along. While everyone is sleeping, the film
spends a rather uncomfortable amount of time showing this priest
giving the girl a bit of a toe-job while also trying to knock one
out, and credit where credit is due, I quote user Lazarillo from the
IMDb when he comments "Of course, this scene is totally
preposterous (after all, there is also a teenage BOY on the elevator
that the priest could have molested)."
Eventually things descend into the scatological and anthropophagic
when the group start eating themselves and their waste, which reminds
one of the film SALO
(of which my mother will not allow me to watch, and I always listen
to mother, because if I don't she makes me wear the skin suit we made
out of daddy, and then daddy has to do things to mother while I
watch, then I have to go in the naughty house and it smells in there,
smells of the homeless folk we dry out on the fireplace after we give
them the special juice that stops their pain)...but I digress.
The problem with this film is that it could mean anything. Is the
message of the film that you have to go through hell to get to
heaven? Is it that those who seek a higher level of existence must
first experience life's lowest points? Or that those who pretend to
be most pious are those who are most morally corrupt? Or perhaps that
the Papacy are in reality untouchable and unobtainable, and the very
notion of penetrating their social sphere is an impossibility, and
that there really exists a them and us society, where a world of
wealth and leisure are basically beyond our reach, and our attempts
to reach it are like some sort of purgatory?
Questions, and question marks. That is all we have. Punctuation, and
punk attitude. I don't know what it means but it must mean something.
There are foxes fighting over territory outside my window. I believe
one of them just uttered "Copper is the metal of the devil. I
have dropped something, but I don't know what it is yet."
The
Invisible Woman a.k.a. The Fantasies of a Sensuous Woman
(1969, Italy, Drama, Director: Paolo Spinola)
Notable
actors: Giovanna Ralli! Silvano Tranquili!
I
sought this one out because Ennio
Morricone's soundtrack is absolutely gorgeous and I wanted to
see if the film lived up to the music. Now I'm not sure if I liked
this one because the soundtrack is so good, or if the film itself was
genuinely good. Eh, I'm not making myself clear here.
You see, a lot of the film involves Giovanna Ralli looking sad and
staring off into space while the soundtrack plays, and we all know
that Morricone's music works best when its got plenty of time to move
around and develop. Director Paolo Spinola seems to understand that
here, and in having a film where there's not much plot anyway, he
just lets the music and the visuals fill in the gaps. This, however,
some may perceive as being boring.
Giovanni Ralli (the cop from WHAT
HAVE THEY DONE
TO YOUR DAUGHTERS?) is having a bit of a hard time. It seems
that her academic husband Silvano Tranquilli has become so bored of
her that he doesn't notice she's there anymore. At one point, he can
even see right through her to a stain on the wall she should be
obscuring. Ralli's not coping very well with this at all, and begins
to think that Silvano might be cheating on her, especially with the
free-living Delfina. I'm not sure why or who in particular she was,
but Delfina was always hanging around with Silvano and Giovanni, and
regularly flirts with both.
Despite painting half her head white and sitting directly in front
of him, it seems Silvano literally at times cannot see Giovanna,
although in saying that he does take notice of her when he walks in
on Delfina seemingly just about to put the moves on her. His
negligence even goes so far that he doesn't even believe her when she
admits to sleeping with a young socialist student who is the polar
opposite of Silvano's character.
This leads me to another aspect of the film that I found interesting
- Giovanna's rather tenuous grasp on reality. Often throughout the
film we see what she sees, and what Giovanna sees isn't always
actually happening. At the opera she sees Silvano groping her friend
Anita, and later is really upset to find Silvano in Delfina's room,
both of them in the buff. This greatly upsets her (and leads to yet
more shots of Giovanna Ralli's huge hazel eyes staring off into space
while the soundtrack plays), and yet, when she returns to her room,
she finds Silvano fast asleep.
I guess that kind of leaves the events of the last half hour of the
film ambiguous, and I'm still not sure what to make of the ending
(was Giovanna even real? Was she the ghost of an ex-wife Silvano was
trying to forget? Who knows). Best to seek it out for yourself. At
the least you'll get to enjoy Morricone's soundtracks, which is as
haunted and lonely sounding as Giovanna herself. Breathy, wordless
female vocals, sad strings, minimal percussion. Very good indeed. If
you want to skip the film the entire soundtrack is on YouTube anyway.
Also, no one smokes like Silvano Tranquilli. So suave!
Isabella,
Duchess of the Devil a.k.a. Ms.
Stiletto (1969, Italy, Action, director: Bruno Corbucci)
Notable
actors: Brigitte Skay! Sal Borgese! Mimmo Palmara! Enzo Andronico!
Oh
no! Some asshole has murdered Brigitte Skay's rich mother and father
and stolen all their land and cool stuff and now Brigitte has to go
and live with the gypsies. Years later, Brigitte swears revenge on
the Van Nutter family and decides to kill the lot of them. To make
things more challenging, Brigitte has decided to do this while
wearing as little clothing as possible. It's like SHOGUN
ASSASSIN, but instead of there being a kid there, there's
boobs instead.
It's good that Bruno Corbucci, director of eleven Inspector Giraldi
films starring Tomas Milian ( I've only watched the first three),
woke up one day and realised that the swashbuckler genre has a lot
of dull spots, and the solution to those dull spots was to fill them
with as much female nudity as he can muster. That means, between the
nifty sword fighting sequences, and sometimes during the nifty
swordfighting sequences, there's always a pair of jelly water mangoes
bouncing around the place.
Brigitte may have been brought up by gypsies (including Sal Borgese
in hyperactive mode), but she hasn't forgotten the nasty land grab by
the Van Nutter dynasty. They haven't forgotten either, so when she
re-emerges into society, they immediately send a lesbian assassin out
there to murder her, so you get nudie love scenes between Brigitte
and some other lady that ends in a killing by Brigitte, who has
serious sexual hang-ups due to witnessing her parents being murdered.
Well, that and every guy in the film trying to force themselves on
her, including squint-eyed actor Enzo Andronico, who gets a blade to
the guts for his trouble.
I've got to admit that there's a certain satisfaction to watching
Brigitte wipe the smug smile of the evil dictator's faces when she stabs/disfigures
the lot of them while usually being topless, a state which she also
seems perpetually caught in during the film BLACKMAIL
(which features no blackmail). It's certainly a device that keeps you
awake during the non-violent parts of the film, as well as all the
other ladies who get naked during the course of the film. In fact,
there's plenty of sleaze here as scenes involve slaves who face death
if they become aroused in front of crowd, and the bad guy's wife who
tries to convince her man she's a bit dirty by possibly taking it up
the wrong 'un.
There's even a bit of gore thrown in at the end and a couple of
twists. For those repelled by the thought of watching an Italian
swashbuckler, this one is worth the watch. It's the perfect match of
history and sleaze. Poor Brigitte Skay died back in 2012 and I've
seen several references to her being a dumb ass, but very little
evidence. That's a strange assumption to make about someone, and if
anyone's got evidence, send it to me.
I
Zombie, You Zombie, She Zombie
(1979, Italy, Comedy/Horror, Director: Nello Rossati)
Notable
actors: Renzo Montagnani! Daniele Vargas! Nadia Cassini!
Is
this the first ever zombie comedy film? I think so, even though I've
done no research into the matter or even bothered to find out if
that's remotely true. What the hell, eh?
Those hoping for a kind of 'missing link' Italian zombie
comedy/horror crossover film will be disappointed to find out that
this film contains absolutely no gore whatsoever. The zombies are
properly undead people, but they just look a bit pale and walk like
zombies, and have a craving for human flesh which will pretty much
fuel the entire plot of the film...until the zombies discover they
don't actually have to eat human flesh. But don't worry about that
turn of events because even stupider things happen later in the film.
It all starts when gravedigger Renzo Montagnani witnesses a road
accident involving two Fiat drivers and a cyclist just trying to have
a casual piss at the side of the road. Renzo ends up in the same room
as the three corpses while reading aloud a book called "Revenge
of the Zombies". Little does he know that when he reads out the
voodoo ceremony from the book, he unwittingly resurrects the trio
lying in coffins behind him, and when they come to life, he instantly
dies of a heart attack. Luckily though the trio of undead read out
the voodoo ceremony again and Renzo finds himself part of a comedy
zombie quartet who are pretty much the Three Stooges with a craving
for human flesh. Or at least they crave flesh because the book told
them that's what they need to eat.
There's not much character development to be had, but apart from
Renzo you've got Daniele Vargas from the giallo spoof THE
TERROR WITH CROSS-EYES
(there's a copy on YouTube of that, so I'll probably review that if I
can get over the fact that the copy there looks like I've instantly
developed cataracts), the cyclist guy, and a guy who kind of looks
like Dean Stockwell in BLUE VELVET.
These four shortly figure out they are pretty shit at ambushing
humans at the roadside, so it's lucky that cyclist guy's Aunt owns a
hotel and instantly dies of a heart attack when she discovers her
nephew is still alive. Shortly afterwards, the four set up shop in
the hotel and most of the film details their attempts to eat the
guests, which always goes wrong.
First there's a very sick man that they all salivate over, then
there's the family that consist of a hen-pecked husband, nagging
wife, and evil, pranking son who carries a picture of Hitler around
with him and constantly trips up the zombies. I've got to say that
things kind of level out about this point in the film what with the
overwhelming constant slapstick comedy, but luckily Nadia Cassini
turns up and interest is once more piqued.
Nadia's travelling companion is a shady criminal guy and he's shady
because he's Nadia's lover and he's just killed her husband. The
zombies are over the moon by this because it means there's a corpse
they can chow down on without any hassle and to make things even
better Nadia is a bit of a nymphomaniac, so when zombie tries to bite
her, she thinks he's coming on to her and the guy gets the green
light for a bit of the old boffing. It's a pity the kid ruins
everything by stealing the zombie book and bringing her husband back
to life.
I suppose it doesn't ruin anything for the audience as we still get
to see Nadia perform a zombie striptease which is the highlight of
the film. The thing to keep in mind is that it doesn't matter which
genre the film exists in, be it horror, Eurocrime, sex comedy,
sci-fi, whatever, the main aim of any Italian film between the late
sixties and mid-nineties is to show some naked lady action. Even the
kids cartoon WINX
CLUB sailed close to the wind what with the short skirts and
the dirty old wizards praying on the fairies (and gave rise to all
those grown up Italian ladies cosplaying Winx Club characters,
whatever the fuck cosplaying means). I suppose you'd only be offended
by all that objectification if you were a woman yourself, and seeing
as my wife didn't even know who Daria Nicolodi was when I told her
that she'd just sadly passed away, I'd say we're in pretty safe
territory for ogling Nadia Cassini's arse, so have the Kleenex at the
ready. It's all good.
Is this film funny or even worth tracking down? It's okay I suppose.
The comedy is very broad though, and even though it takes the piss
out of DAWN OF THE DEAD
at the end by having the zombies being the ones in the supermarket
besieged by the living, the ending is still a total cop out. It was
okay I guess. I did feel a bit relieved when it ended, to be honest.
Notable notable: Nadia Cassini also starred in THE
SERPENT GOD, which I now know is also on YouTube. The
strange thing is, when I searched on YouTube itself the film didn't
come up, but when I searched using Google, it did come up. It did the
same thing with Bing (!) of all things. So if you're searching for
films, use different search engines. That's how I end watching so
many of these films.
Either that or you could do something actually worthwhile. It's your
call. Like, save donkeys or something, or be part of some polarized
political mob that would support their cause even if their leaders
used a helicopter to defecate on a children's play park for a laugh.
Jiboa
(1989, Italy, Action, Director: Mario Bianchi)
Notable
actors: Rick Dean! Bobby Rhodes!
Somewhere
in his career b-movie actor Rick Dean took a wrong turn and instead
of ending up in a crappy US low-budget film, he ends up in an even
worse no-budget Italian one instead. One that's a kind of little bit INDIANA
JONES, a wee bit ROMANCING
THE STONE, a little bit of CANNIBAL
HOLOCAUST and a whole lot of crap.
The film starts with Rick waking up with no memory in what looks
exactly like the village from AMAZONIA:
THE CATHERINE MILES STORY. Now, you're going to be wondering
why the natives are so friendly to Rick, because throughout the film
whenever Rick ends up in this village, a guy with a machine gun in a
helicopter turns up and starts blowing the crap out of everything.
Why? I'm not sure. I thought he was Rick's partner, but he might have
a drug dealer or something.
Rick escapes the helicopter and jungle, but then gets sent right
back in there with a female sidekick in tow. Turns out his partner,
whom he can't remember, was her fiancé and they'd found some
sort of emerald mine or temple out in the jungle somewhere. It's a
shame Rick can't remember where it is, because an angry, violent
Bobby Rhodes and his angry, violent entourage insist that he's got to
take them there anyway.
Rhodes' gang, Rick and the chick end up going on a jungle trek,
where Rick tricks piranha fish into eating a guy, a spider into
biting some other guy in the face, and then everyone gets kidnapped
by a bigger group of violent folk. It doesn't make much sense but our
heroes escape, turn up at the village (where Rick seems to have a
topless girlfriend) only for the helicopter guy to turn up and start
murdering everyone again. If I was the chief of that tribe I would
have tied Rick to a pole, drawn a target on his chest and run for shelter.
Things get a bit hut-explody for a bit before Rick regains his
memory drinking native spit and everyone has a stand off in a cave
full of jewels. It's like every mid-to-late action cliché
thrown into one film, saved only by Bobby Rhodes rage. It sure as
hell isn't Rick Dean's finest hour. Save the acting chops for CARNOSAUR
3: PRIMAL SPECIES Rick!
Director Mario Bianchi would go on to
make such harmless sounding films as THE CLINIC FOR ANAL INSPECTION,
THE ANGEL OF SEX... ANAL, EUROFLESH 8: DEEP ANAL, DOUBLE
CONTACT ANAL, FRANCESCA: ANAL SYMPHONY and THE LAST
ANAL TANGO. I hope they opened a window after making that lot and
sprayed a bit of air freshener about. Good Lord!
Joshua
and the Promised Land (2003,
US, Kids, Animation, Director: Jim Lion)
Starring: GOD!
So,
if you've watched FOODFIGHT!
(2012) and thought that's as bad as animation can get, check out this
one, which is exponentially worse, although it does have the excuse
of being extremely low budget. It's also a God film, with an unhappy
kid called Joshua (who looks like a lion, but has no tail and looks
bizarrely naked) hiding in his room from his miserable parents and
being visited by a ghost creature who looks like he's made of
television static. After a dodgy sounding conversation "Come
with me Joshua, you trust me, right? Take my hand", this
potential ghost paedo takes Joshua back in time to the land of Moses,
where I must say the main problem for me was how much of an asshole
God was.
While a purple flying creature with a bow-tie narrates for us,
Joshua somehow enters the back of some guy (possesses, I guess), and
becomes the object of Moses' desire, or at least that was the
impression that I got from the 'you can pitch your tent next to mine
Joshua' - sounds to me like Moses was pitching a tent right there and
then if you know what I mean!
The thing that gets me about this whole set up is that God
(presented here as a gigantic ball of flame that can fly and shoot
lightening but can't fight Moses' battles for him) makes a big deal
of choosing Moses and the Jews as his chosen ones, but then he makes
a big deal of destroying the Egyptians (whom he created), the
Malacites (whom he created) and the Canaanites (who he not only
created, he made them break the Ten Commandments as well). The
rewards of Moses' faith is to wander the desert for years and die
without him or all the original escaped slaves every entering the
promised land. That doesn't sound like a god - that sounds like a
petulant gamer playing a sandbox game in 'evil' mode or a kid in a
bad mood hurling his action figures around. Why didn't they just all
tell God to fuck off? He would have probably had a tantrum and killed
them all anyway, but at least it would have been quicker.
But that's not the message this weird-ass film is out to give you.
Here, God will give you the strength so that your stressed out freaky
looking lion parents will forgive each other their sins and get on
with life. My daughter watched this and couldn't stop laughing until
she remembered twenty minutes into it that she'd actually stopped
playing a video game to come see what shite her dad was watching this
time, at which point she went back to that. In conclusion, I watched
more animated films than my kids.
Karate
Rock a.k.a. The Boy With The Iron
Fists (1990, Italy, Action, Director: Fabrizio De Angelis)
Notable
actors: Antonio Sabato Jnr! David Warbeck!
It's
a race to see who is the biggest wanker at Really Old Student High
School, USA! Is it Jeff, Tae Kwan Do champion with a group of fawning
fans and a dirty looking girlfriend whom he shouts "Put out or
shut up!" at? Or is it new kid Antonio Sabato Jnr, a cop's son
brought to down by dad David Warbeck, who has the hots for Jeff's
disloyal girlfriend? Sabato I mean, not Warbeck. I'd fix that
sentence structure but this film isn't worth it.
It's hard to tell or even care, but Antonio wins a crappy dancing
competition with Jeff's girlfriend, who changes sides more often than
the country this film was made by when involved in a war. This
frankly strange world these pseudo-youngsters inhabit is filled with
a neighbour who fancies Antonio but is ignored by him for most of the
film, a Korean old man who will show Antonio how to kick
ass...eventually, the fat guy from the KARATE
WARRIOR films for some reason, and a terrible nightclub
where Sinead O'Connor's "Nothing Compares 2 U" plays all
the time on the video monitors. There's also a token black character
called, and get this, Chocolate Jim! That wouldn't happen today in
the twenty-first century's racially harmonious society.
What possessed director Fabrizio De Angelis to take time out from
making the six films of the KARATE
WARRIOR series
to make a film with the exact same plot as the KARATE WARRIOR
films? Did he have some sort of ultra-specific OCD that made him
continually make the same film over and over again? Or some kind of
mild brain damage where he couldn't remember making the last
twenty-seven KARATE WARRIOR films and just woke up every day
thinking "I better make that karate film I've been meaning to
shoot"? Or was he just making a karate film so shitty that it
made those KARATE WARRIOR films seem like masterpieces by
comparison? That's two films I've watched with Antonio Sabato Jnr in
them, and both times I've wished someone had run him over with a
steamroller after the first five minutes. Or failing that, hoping
that someone would run me over with a steamroller instead.
The plot is identical to the KARATE WARRIOR films. New kid in
town with David Warbeck as a dad? Check. Bunch of morons acting the
twat in town because they can do "Korean Karate", as it's
referred to here? Check. Fat guy eating chicken/ice cream? Yep. Two
lead wankers competing in a bike race/car race/dancing contest?
Check. Sycophantic sidekick getting a kicking by bunch of fannies?
Check. Low-budget showdown where previously discouraging family
members turn up to approve of serious assault? Check.
For fuck's sake!
Karzan,
The Fabulous Man of The Jungle (1972,
Italy, Adventure, Director: Demofilo Fidani)
Notable
actors: Ettore Manni! Edmund Purdom (dubbing only)!
You
know you are in for a fun ride when Demofilo Fidani misspells the
fake name he's given to Karzan actor Armando Bottin, who is billed
here as Jhonny Kissmuller Jr. There's also another actor listed as
Crazy Matthew, so you're not even out of the credits before realising
this film is something special.
The thing is, I honestly can't tell if Fidani is taking the piss or
not. Judging by the last ten minutes, it would seem that he is, but I
just can't tell if he tacked that on because what goes before it is
so goofy and hilarious. I mean, most of the film is your bog standard
jungle adventure story, but with the tone of Bruno Mattei's ZOMBIE
CREEPING FLESH. Plus, Karzan, who has a sidekick chimp
called Chika, doesn't even turn up until forty five minutes into the
film, and that's while his girlfriend Shiran is having a sexy cat
fight with a blacked-up Carla Mancini wearing an afro wig.
The first half of the film details a scientist hiring Ettore Manni,
a journalist, some lady and harmonica playing mute called Crazy to go
to Africa and bring back Karzan, whom they've spotted in some
travelogue footage. Ettore reckons he can make a pretty penny from
Karzan, whereas the scientist wants to keep him for research, and so
they all head off to Africa and an awful lot of stock footage. Don't
worry about animal cruelty in this one folks - Ettore Manni starts
shooting at an elephant, and director Fidani can't even afford
footage of an elephant being shot, so instead we get short shots of
an elephant bathing in a river. Also when I think about it you do see
stock footage of a bison getting shot later, so forget that thing I
said about there being no animal cruelty.
The film is pretty entertaining and daft before Karzan even turns
up. The girl gets a fake looking spider crawling up her leg, and
Crazy blows it away with a blow dart! Their jeep gets stuck in the
sand, so Fidani cuts in stock footage of a lion looking bored to ramp
up the excitement. Funky looking savages attack our brave white
travellers while their bag carriers cower in fear. You can see how
that would cause offence, but the terrible dummy of a savage falling
from a tree was pretty funny. Everyone runs away from a huge battle
with the natives before all of a sudden they are tied to poles and
about to be sacrificed by the aforementioned Carla Mancini and a guy
who is seemingly having a GREAT time battering away at some bongos.
This is when Karzan and Shiran turn up to rescue the lot of them,
taking away the young lady to their treehouse, where she shows Shiran
how time works and what her name is in a remarkably cringey scene. I
thought we were maybe building up to a sexy threesome or something,
but it turns out just to be a load of fluff before the white men show
up to take Karzan and Shiran back to civilisation. They grab Shiran
but Karzan escapes, mainly because he hasn't fought any animals yet.
The crocodile fight is pretty funny as the crocodile is one of the
worst I've seen, but I have to admit that one of my favourites scene
here must be when Karan is walking through the jungle when a guy in
the worst ape suit in history challenges him to a fight. Now, the
jungle blabber Karzan and Shiran spout had me laughing a lot, but
when Karzan kicks the ape's arse and it goes off in a huff, muttering
to itself, I nearly lost it. Please note that this film is still
played 100% straight at this point, even though it's obvious the
mouth of the ape suit isn't working right and keeps hanging open.
This is where things start getting strange for Karzan, because he
gets captured and ends up in a cage in a zoo, where an old man laughs
at him and calls him an asshole...and then...
[MAJOR SPOILER FOR A FILM NO ONE CARES ABOUT BELOW]
...an
alarm rings beside a bed and Karzan wakes up, seemingly late for
work. In true Benny Hill style, he gets ready and runs through Rome,
speeded up, to get to his work, where all the characters he
encountered work too. He then grabs Shiran (who is Ettore Manni's
secretary) and they both run off to the beach and go for a swim,
before Chika strolls down to the sand and writes THE END with a stick.
What the fuck?
Is KARZAN an elaborate joke played on the audience? Were all
the terrible punch ups intended? And the shaky cameras, sharp edits,
and people ending a scene by either walking or shoving an object
towards the camera? Or did Fidani realise he didn't have an ending
for the film and just tried to say 'you see, it was a comedy all
along'. Who knows? I sure don't, but that's why I like Italian
cinema. You just never know what you're getting into sometimes. If
the bulk of the film is a satire, I think Fidani played his cards too
close to his chest, but I believe the ending was inserted to mask the
stinker of a film that it follows. I enjoyed it either way.
[SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT CARLA MANCINI'S INCLUSION IN FILM CREDITS ALSO BEING SOME SORT OF ELABORATE IN-JOKE IN ITALIAN CINEMATIC CIRCLES]
Carla
Mancini may or may not be some sort of running joke in Italian
films. Not the actress herself, who definitely exists, but the
insertion of her name into the credits of a film seems to be an
in-joke, surely. Ive seen her for certain in films like FIVE
WOMEN FOR THE KILLER, but look at the amount of films
shes supposed to have appeared in, by year:
1970
Twelve films
1971
Twenty-eight films
1972
Fifty-nine films!
1973
Fifty-nine films!
1974
Fifty-one films
1975
Fifteen films
After that, there's not much, but you have to wonder if they just
stuck her name in the credits for a laugh, because she does get some
'credits only' credits. Why? Who knows. She does appear here and
there, sometimes just in one scene, sometimes with a few words to
say, and sometimes you can watch the entire film without seeing her
at all. The main question is this: Why did I count how many films
she'd been credited for and could I have been doing something more
productive instead?
The answer to that is no.
Kinski
Paganini a.k.a. Paganini a.k.a.
I'm So Great I Made A Film About How I Shagged Myself While I Watched
a.k.a. Ah, So THAT'S Why Eva Grimaldi is Gay Now (1989, Italy, Horror
[to me at least], Director: Klaus Kinski)
Written
by: Klaus Kinski
Edited
by: Klaus Kinski
Director:
Klaus Kinski
Jizz
mopper: Klaus Kinski
Notable
actors: Klaus Kinski! Debora "Kinski" Caprioglio! Nikolai
Kinski! Dalila Di Lazzaro! Eva Grimaldi!
Klaus
Kinski's narcissistic personality disorder becomes manifest in this
tribute to violinist Niccolo Paganini, but in having written and
directed the film, what we really get here is a film where Klaus
Kinski celebrates himself. Seriously, this film basically starts with
Kinski receiving a standing ovation before he even starts a
performance, and when he does start it, the ladies in the audience
start jilling themselves off!
This terrible, disjointed pile of crap is acclaimed by some as a
window into Kinski's mind, and if that is so, it's like looking in on
a pile of discarded cartilage that somehow became sentient and tried
to reproduce by shagging itself. Literally every woman in this film
is aroused by Kinski, who sometimes looks like Wolverine if he drank
two bottles of vodka a day and had at least six or seven gypsy curses
working on him at one time, although sometimes he looks like Edward
Scissorhands if he'd been kept in an underground Austrian slave cage
while suffering from untreated mental disorders for which he was
suddenly diagnosed and given all his strong medication in one huge dose.
Apart from all the ladies in the audience flicking their beans to
his off-key caterwauling, there's also the woman who gets so aroused
by Paganini that she chugs one out to some horses getting it on,
which brought back my horse porn trauma of Massimo Dallamano's VENUS
IN FURS, and that's not the worst crime Kinski commits here.
He gets so entrenched in documenting Paganini's sexual prowess (aka
his sexual prowess) that he has him receiving a blow job from a
possible underage hooker while fantasising about even more underage
girls. In light of what one of Kinskis daughters accused him of, this
made the fish fingers and baked beans I had for dinner crawl back up
my throat. Oh, and thanks for killing both a chicken and a goat in
this one Kinski, you fucking Easter Island statue looking nonce.
I watched Kinski's original version of the film so I don't know what
the official version contains, but what you get here is Kinski
possibly rimming a woman, actually 'dining at the Y', having a woman
beg him for more because he's so good, and lifting Debora Caprioglio
into the air so he can nuzzle her gigantic breasts. Careful there
Klaus, you might lose an eye there, and we don't want one of those
weird fuckers getting loose on the world.
There's no real plot and the whole thing is filmed in the Cinema
Verite style, which means loads of shaky cameras and out-of-focus
stuff. The whole thing jumps back and forth in time too, so it starts
with Paganini on his death bed (possibly by catching sight of himself
in the mirror), and ends by Kinski discarding all the actually
interesting sex stuff to focus on his relationship with his son, so
that the last half hour of the film is interminably boring.
Wanker.
Kleinhoff
Hotel (1977, Italy, Drama,
Director: Carlo Lizzani)
Notable
actors: Corrine Clery! Bruce Robinson! Werner Pochath! Michele Placido!
This
is going to be a hard one to review because rather a lot of this
film involves Corrine Clery in a hotel staring through a small crack
at the weird occupant of the next room.
Like Lizzani's giallo THE
HOUSE OF
THE
YELLOW CARPET, most of this film takes place in one location
- the Kleinhoff Hotel, located somewhere in Germany. Clery ends up
there because she misses her flight back to Paris and choose the
hotel because of a sordid relationship she had there back when she
was a student. She's a bit shocked to find the place run down and
filled with low-lifes, but decides to stay there anyway for nostalgic reasons.
That same night, she hears crazed muttering from the room next door
and finds that there's a crack at the top of the adjoining door where
she can just about see what's going on. The guy in there is Karl
(played by Bruce Robinson, who would go on to direct the very famous
British film WITHNAIL & I).
Karl's a bit highly strung and seems to be hiding out in the hotel
for as yet unknown reasons. He does seem to have a girlfriend, a
junky by the name of Petra who likes to shoot up in his room, much to
his disapproval. Clery finds herself fascinated by Karl, and judging
by the inquisitive looks she gets from him when their eyes meet out
in the hall, the feeling might be reciprocated.
Clery should really be going back to Paris and back to her rich,
unfulfilled life, but she remains at the hotel, watching Karl and
listening in on his conversations. One day Karl is visited by
photographer Werner Pochath (don't get excited - he's only in this
one scene) and Clery learns that Karl is part of a radical political
movement who plan on various activities to shake up the system. There
also seems to be some sort of inner turmoil in the group, as a
member, Pedro (played by perennially depressed looking Michele
Placido) seems to have become a turncoat.
However, Clery isn't interested in all that. Clery clearly wants to
get into Karl's pants, big style, and no doubt anyone who has spotted
the word 'film' and the name 'Corrine Clery' knows what's going to
happen next. That's right - Clery gets naked and pretty much stays in
that state more and more frequently until the film ends.
Now I thought this film would bore me to tears at first, but it does
pick up a bit. Karl's politics and Karl's mental health keep coming
to the fore while Clery seems to see Karl as an escape from her
boring, settled life back into the past when she was free. Or
something like that. It's a Carlo Lizzani film - not exactly full of
hilarious dialogue and slapstick. Even when he does start off with a
light-hearted film, it usually ends up being a horribly depressing
experience - check out his film BLACK
TURIN - that's one bi-polar film.
For fans of naked Corrine Clery only or Carlo Lizzani completists.
Or fans of Bruce Robinson having screaming sessions while listening
to jazz.
The
Knight, The Devil and Death
(1983, Italy, Horror [I guess], Director: Beppe Cino)
Notable
actors: Mirella D'Angelo! Jeanne Mas seems to be famous in France!
Despite
being a big fan of Stanley Kubrick, I've never watched EYES
WIDE SHUT, which is based on the same book as this film,
Traumnovelle. I read a quick synopsis of the book however to see if
the plot was the same, and it kind of was...up to a point.
Basically, some married man gets depressed at the revelation that
his wife was thinking of cheating on him and goes for a wander
through the city at night, encountering a pervy secret society. This
happens in the book and the film, but the film is also full of
strange sights such as hanging corpses, the husband dreaming he's
being murdered by his daughter, and visions of him finding his wife's
bloody body.
There also seems to be a sinister recurring character who must be
the Devil, and loads of shots of the guy's daughter running around
looking for her mother, who also seems to be suffering from a bad
case of arthouse movie surrealism. Everything is rather dreamlike as
you'd expect, with people appearing/disappearing or running over the
same bit of ground over and over again. Mirella D'Angelo looks
startled a lot.
Eighties pop star Jeanne Mas turns up as a mysterious girl who
tempts the husband and opens up the whole weird night for him, but I
can't see this rare film being unearthed and re-released. It's
basically a film about a guy wandering around staring at things. I
can barely remember what happened in it and I watched it last night!
The music was rather snazzy though.
The
Legend of the Titanic (1999,
Italy/North Korea, Animation, Director: Orlando Corradi/Kim J Ok)
Notable
actors: Legendary voice actor Nick Alexander, who appears in about
99% of Italian films in voice form, and his daughter!
Imagine
my horror when I discovered that there wasn't just one Italian
animated film involving the Titanic and animals, but three! THREE!
There is no god. This happens sometimes when exploring Italian films.
Once upon a time I thought there were maybe two or three films based
around the story of White Fang. Now I know there's at least nine.
Anyway - Camillo Teti's deplorable TITANIC:
THE LEGEND GOES ON now appears to me to have been cobbled
together quickly to confuse the money-paying public into thinking
they were watching this film, which is still bad, but tending more
towards good-bad rather than total shite bad. No rapping dogs here
for starters.
This film is also comparably better animated than the other one, but
still pretty crappy. It's the story here that makes it easier to
watch, because it's so fucking ridiculous. The set up is as usual - a
bunch of humans get on the Titanic from various levels in society.
One Duke and his daughter are on board, pursued by a suitor who wants
to marry into the family and obtain a global whaling contract. On
another level, a bunch of talking animals get on board too, including
a mouse who is telling the entire story in flashback to his
grandchildren (and it's heavily implied at the end by his wife that
he may just be talking absolute bollocks).
So far, so shite, as a romantic sub-plot develops between the
daughter and some gypsy guy. Luckily things pick up slightly as the
daughter's tears hit a moonbeam and she ends up being able to
understand a floating dolphin while the suitor's minion tells a gang
of mobster sharks that they have to sink the ship by tricking a
gigantic octopus into throwing an iceberg at the Titanic. I haven't
watched the James Cameron version of events - was there any floating
dolphins in that one?
Best of all is the octopus, which for some reason has the face of
Casper The Ghost, only with a dog's nose. I also think that there was
mentally something wrong with the octopus too, because he seemed
awfully susceptible to suggestion by anyone around him, gleefully
throwing icebergs around so he could win a shark's hat, getting
guilt-tripped by a dolphin, holding the Titanic together so our
heroes can escape, and most bizarrely of all, letting a bunch of
animals have a party on his head at the end of the film.
Due to the outlandish events, this one is less painful to sit
through than TITANIC: THE LEGEND GOES ON. At least some
attempt is made to actually entertain, even though it doesn't make
any sense and no child in its right mind would watch this. My
favourite bit was when the octopus ran (!) to the ship to save it.
Long
Live...Your Death! a.k.a. Don't
Turn the Other Cheek (1971,
Italy, Western, Director: Duccio Tessari)
Notable
actors: Franco Nero! Eli Wallach! Lynn Redgrave! Eduardo Fajardo!
Carla Mancini! Marilu Tolo! Victor Israel...and, god help us...his arse!
Italy's
most hit and miss director takes on Italy's most hit and miss
sub-genre (the western comedy) and comes up with a film that is
totally hit and miss, which means it's mostly enjoyable, except for
those bits where it's not.
The premise involves Franco Nero as a dodgy faux-Russian prince
posing as a priest to rob a wedding, but then getting roped in to
take the last rites from a dying man who knows where a shitload of
gold is. Nero finds out the name of the town the gold is near, but
learns that the information regarding the actual location of the gold
is known by only two men, and he doesn't know their names. He also
learns that the only guy who does know their names is about to be
hanged as a rebel leader, even though he's not a rebel leader.
He's actually just an ordinary bandit played by Eli Wallach, but
Irish revolutionary Lynn Redgrave needs a figurehead to start the
Mexican revolution, and seeing as how the actual rebel leader is
dead, she's going to use Eli Wallach instead. Nero blags his way into
jail but is caught, mainly due to the sheriff being his cousin, whom
he paralysed with a bullet to the back years prior, causing the
sheriff to walk around wearing a tortoise like armour outfit.
Nero breaks out Wallach and they reluctantly team up with Redgrave,
only to be instantly caught by military general Eduardo Fajardo,
who's looking to put down any local insurgents. Fajardo's kind of
taken by Redgrave, which works in favour for the Nero/Wallach team
up, even if they don't even trust each other. A race across Mexico
ensues, as Wallach knows the identity of those have co-ordinates of
the location of the gold on their person, whereas Nero knows the town
that acts as a starting point for those co-ordinates. Try not to
think about it too much.
Things eventually lead to Victor Israel, a mining tycoon who
underpays his employees, and then some. In a scene that accurately
portrays the kind of tonal problems this film has, a violent gunfight
breaks out and Wallach and Nero take Israel hostage, where Wallach
reveals that half of the co-ordinates are tattooed on Israel's arse.
Now, I must point out that Israel has been made to look even more
ugly than usual, with a hare lip and mutated nostril and such like,
so when Nero pulled down Israel's arse and stared at it from a far
too uncomfortable distance, I must admit a part of me died inside,
rather than confront that scene head on.
It's basically THE
GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY, only it's The Liar, The Thief,
and The Irish Terrorist. The premise is the same though, only due to
the time this one came out, there had to be a comedy element thrown
in there too. The thing is, whereas I'm glad this one didn't go over
the top in the slapstick stakes like a lot of these comedy westerns,
this one might have gone too far in the other direction, with
remarkably grim scenes contrasting badly with Chaplin-like antics. I
mean, Marilu Tolo's character can't take as she's had her tongue cut
out, but then gets further brutalized and murdered by the military,
and yet not much further on Lynn Redgrave (Nero's real-life
sister-in-law) has a cheese ball slapstick sequence with Eduardo
Fajaro. This happens over and over again - violent gun fights married
up to comedy antics. Unlike the film MY
NAME IS NOBODY, or CALIFORNIA,
where the balance works out, the changes in tone in this one are
kind of jarring and annoying.
That said, it's Franco Nero and Eli Wallach up there acting like a
couple of fudds, so there's not much to complain about there. When
the editing settles down a bit from frenetic, the cinematography does
recall the RETURN OF RINGO
and other goodness, so the film isn't a total washout, but I kind of
wish Tessari had settled on a certain mood for this one and just
stuck with it, because it seems likes he's going for all moods at
once, and it doesn't quite work.
The Long Shadow of The Wolf (1971, Italy, War, Written/Produced/Acted and Directed by: Gianni Manera)
It's
hard to describe Gianni Manera's films. He only directed three of
them (and wrote one other, the possibly lost or even non-existent
Western CHRYSANTHEMUMS
FOR A BUNCH OF SWINE) and all three films exist in already
crowded genres. However, despite lack of budget or even acting
skills, Manera for me has managed to make his work stand out, just
because of how odd his whole approach to film-making.
Now that I've watched all three I would say that your introduction
to Manera should be the loopy crime/giallo ORDERS
SIGNED IN WHITE, a near two-hour film directed by and
starring Manera as a bank robber stuck in a house where a killer is
doing in the criminals...and painting their heads white for some
reason. This mix of drama, heist, murder and lengthy
ski-slope/satanic ritual dream sequence is a must, if you can find
the subtitled version. It was there on Youtube at some point, which
means it might be there again in the future.
THE LONG SHADOW OF THE WOLF is the least of Manera's films,
but still has plenty of moments and strange directing decisions that
will leave you scratching your head. First of all is the title
sequence, where Manera's Wolf character, the leader of a group of
Italian partisans, crosses a barren landscape while running from the
Germans. Quite a typical opener, except for the animated eagle that
interrupts the credits for no reason whatsoever.
The Wolf and his gang have been troubling the Germans for a while
now, so the Wermacht have drafted in SS Lieutenant Heinze Werner, who
is missing an arm, possibly lost during one of those epileptic
seizure-inducing flashbacks he keeps having at every time he stops to
think about anything. His great idea is to draft in a local who now
works for the fascists, someone who knows the area, someone who is
going to flush The Wolf out, someone who just happens to be The
Wolf's childhood best friend and whose ex-lover is now The Wolf's
wife and mother of The Wolf's kid (cub?). Drama ahoy!
This childhood friend is Andrea, and when he bumps into The Wolf's
sister, she claims that she doesn't know where his childhood
sweetheart is now living. She also lies and says The Wolf was killed.
These lies are going to cause trouble further down the line, but most
confusing for me was the sequence where The Wolf's sister is grabbed
by two Germans and raped, but then seems to enjoy it before partisans
kill the two Germans and warn her that her brother won't be happy. In
true Manera style, none of this is ever mentioned ever again.
Just to confuse the viewer, Manera the director includes an
extremely lengthy sequence where the German soldiers and the local
Italian aristocracy have a never-ending party which is intercut with
the scenes of Manera the actor meeting some US paratroopers and
heading out to destroy a chemical lab (a shed with one guy in it).
For reasons unknown to anyone but himself, Manera has Lt. Werner's
assistant mingle with the party guests even though his character
isn't of much significance to the plot, then introduces some people
we never see again, then has the camera focuses right up on a guy's
face as if he's going to cut away to another scene, only to pull the
camera back to reveal some character has entered the room.
This quirkiness livens up what really would be a dull story line,
from the billiard-table pocket POV shot to a truly head scratching
moment where the camera pans away from the conversation to show a
suit of armour that suddenly moves it's arms for no good reason.
There's even an animated blood splat that hits the camera in the end
battle. What it's meant to convey, I don't know.
I'm making this out to be a lot more interesting than the film is,
being as it is nearly two hours long and featuring about five minutes
of action, so be warned. Those looking into the outer-reaches of
Italian cinema may find it worth the journey. I don't regret it.
Love
Circle a.k.a. One Night At Dinner
(1969, Italy, Drama, Director: Guiseppe Patroni Griffi)
Notable
actors: Florinda Bolkan! Tony Musante! Jean-Louis Trintignant!
Written by
Dario Argento (so you can blame him for this one).
Here's
me selfishly concerned about my own well-being and lot in life when
I discovered these people in this film have real problems. I had just
come home from my job as an elephant jizz-mopper at my local porn zoo
to my wife and family, connected up my wife's feeding funnel and six
gallon drum of ice cream, gave the kids their dog food and sat down
to watch LOVE CIRCLE before the electricity ran out for the night.
Half an hour in and it dawned on me. I realised how much of a
self-centred bastard I was. I looked up at the screen at Florinda
Bolkan's face, a single tear running down my cheek. How could I just
sit...just sit there on a pile of empty boxes, eating Lidl brand
beans from a tin with my bare hands, my feet resting on a dead dog,
totally oblivious that there was a whole society of people out there
crippled with worry and anxiety, struggling from day to day,
preoccupied by the notion that they were in fact having too much sex
and fun. What a heartless bastard I was.
LOVE CIRCLE details the misfortunes of these poor creatures
and the burden they have to bear in their exhausting and fruitless
jobs as actors, playwrights, or just being plain rich for no reason.
We have Jean-Louis Trintignant as Micheal, a writer who wants to
write a play about his wife (Florinda Bolkan) shagging his best
friend (the facial mole-tastic Tony Musante). What he doesn't know
(or maybe he does) is that Florinda and Tony have been at it together
for years, possibly even before Michael got married. What's more, to
spice things up a bit Musante has introduced another lover for he and
Florinda to share - an angry revolutionary actor who likes to make
love under a Nazi flag.
For us, the sympathetic viewer, we have to piece all this together
because the film jumps around chronologically like some hyperactive PULP
FICTION where nothing happens but flirting and people being
middle-class, so at the start of the film Musante has already told
the Nazi guy to take a hike and now Florinda has started cheating on
both him and Michael with this other guy. Gradually, and I mean
gradually in this two hour film, we get the full story, then some
things happen, then the film ends with people sitting around a dinner
table talking about Chinese nuclear warfare capability. I'm not joking.
I suppose if you are big fan of the leads you might get something
out it. You get to see Florinda Bolkan naked, which doesn't happen
very often, but to be honest she could do with a six gallon drum of
ice cream as she's like a coat hanger with hair. Jean-Louis
Trintignant's' character is detached, so there's not much happening
there, so you have to rely on Musante and the young guy for any form
of drama. There's also a threesome scene that shows little but must
have pushed the envelope a bit back then. It's hard to care for
characters like this who have loads of money and free time on their
hands to be honest, and I wasn't even too sure what the ending was
all about.
I only sought this one out due to Ennio
Morricone's soundtrack, and other than that and the
cinematography, there was not much to this one for me.
The
Loves Of Daphne a.k.a.
Forbidden Intimacy of A Young Bride (1970, Italy, Drama, Director:
Oscar Brazzi)
Notable
actors: Rossano Brazzi!
There
is no one called Daphne in this film. This film was written in part
by Renato Polselli. That's why the title refers to a Daphne that
doesn't exist, and that's also why a character in this film has two
separate flashbacks at the same time, and also why the ending of this
film doesn't just have one ending, but all the possible endings it
could have.
It's a period drama narrated by a girl who enjoys running through
the woods naked. I also enjoyed her running through the woods naked,
so everyone is a winner in that respect. She's the niece of rich
Uncle Rossano Brazzi (from PSYCHOUT
FOR MURDER and actual normal world films like DAMIEN:
OMEN II and such shit). Rossano is your every day average
rich guy living in a huge villa with his son, his niece, and his
borderline insane henchman who spends a lot of this film screaming
and gibbering.
From naked wood-running girl's point of view, everything is great
until Electra shows up. When she does, it's clear that Franz,
Brazzi's son, is madly in love with her, what with the flirting and
the interminable giggling from Electra. Then again, Brazzi also seems
to be in love with her, and therefore an unspoken love rival issue
appears between father and son (and insane henchman, who releases all
the horses from their stables while screaming at the top of his
voice, which he'll do again and again throughout the film). Somehow,
the jealous father wins, and Electra agrees to marry him, prompting
Franz to vanish for a while and also prompting the henchman guy to
have a hilarious meltdown in the kitchen while smashing loads of eggs
but at the same time seemingly screaming and mixing some nice pancake
mix at the same time.
Electra, for whatever reason, is up for a bit of honeymoon sex, and
this is when Brazzi's chronic flashback syndrome goes into overdrive,
when he simultaneously has sex with Electra while flashing back to
not one, but two different sexual encounters with his first wife, who
died while giving birth to Franz, whom Brazzi blames for her death.
That's harsh, but what's also harsh is Electra's realisation that
Brazzi is out of his mind and thinks that Electra is his first wife,
which he does by referring to things that happened back then with
her, which causes Electra to freak out and placate him by playing along.
Now, from watching this film I'm going to give out this piece of
advice to potentially cuckolding lovers out there. If you absolutely
have to make goo-goo eyes at each other across a room, please make
sure that the spouse, who is being cheated on, is not sitting
directly in the middle of your field of vision, and is not, at that
precise moment, cleaning their gun collection. I know this is common
sense for most people but in this film it's okay to cheat on husbands
directly outside of villas in full view of every single person in the
villa. Although that does lead to a funny bit where Brazzi plays
dominoes with three people who aren't there.
As if the crazy dialogue, flashback attacks, and colour filters
aren't enough to alert you that Renato Polselli was involved, there's
also the ending, where every possible thing that could have happened
happens. I think if figured it out, but it sure is the weirdest part
of what already was a pretty weird film.
Director Oscar Brazzi (wait - was he related to the lead guy?) also
directed the even more strange giallo SEX
OF THE DEVIL (a.k.a. TRYPTICH).
That's one well worth tracking down. Oh, I should also mention that Stelvio
Cipriani's soundtrack is very lush and adds to the strange atmosphere.
Madame
And Her Niece (1969, West
Germany, Drama, Director: Eberhard Schroder)
Notable
actors: Edwige Fenech!
We
can all agree that Edwige Fenech is the type of woman for whom you
would crawl for three miles over broken glass just to poke matches in
her shit, but I don't know if I can sit through another one of her
crappy late sixties films where not much happens.
The moral compass on this one is way off as we see that Edwige is
not really the niece of gold-digger Michelle, but her daughter. Why
this deception is in place, I don't know, but maybe it's to convince
potential rich sugar-daddies that Michelle hasn't got a vagina like a
burst couch due to child birth. Michelle is convinced that Edwige is
an innocent student, whereas we get clued in on Edwige not only
taking part in sexy photo shoots, she also part of the old
gold-digging business herself, with a nice attentive doctor under her
thumb. As well as loads of annoying hippy friends who stink up both
her house and the film.
When Michelle's current lover takes ill while in bed with her (he's
loving it, and she's going on about a forthcoming holiday in
Acapulco), Michelle has to look elsewhere, finding a rich billionaire
Count and his bed-hopping son. She's into the son and thinks Edwige
can distract the dad, but it soon becomes clear that the son is more
interested in Edwige. I think. It was hard to keep track of things
while rummaging around looking for Kleenex and pausing the film every
two seconds when I detected footsteps approaching the living room door.
The thing is, this film kind of sets thing up for Edwige to discover
that tricking men into loving her is a foolish task and that only
true love can lead to happiness, but then goes down the route of
gleefully following Edwige's sociopathic tendencies as she pretends
to get involved in an orgy in a hot tub (that was a good bit),
pretends to overdose on hashish (what? A Snickers bar and some diet
coke would have sorted her out) then, stunningly, pretends to have
attempted suicide in order to get the rich count's son to propose to
her - which works without any negative repercussions! Good lesson
taught there then.
Not as erotic as I was led to believe, although it did seems to be
cut in places, Madame and Her Niece does contain plenty of Edwige
flesh, pouting, and whatever it is she does with her eyes, but the
character she plays in the film is a spoilt brat always with the eye
on the money, so it's hard to feel anything but contempt both for her
and for yourself after you've knocked one out to the hot tub scene.
To be fair, maybe the images of rich, snobby people sipping on
champagne and having loose, free sex didn't quite connect with me as
I sat on my destroyed piss-smelling couch which has been chewed by
rats, feeling my newly-acquired lockdown gut slope down either side
of my hips while I sat there wearing a Santa t-shirt five times too
big for me in June (my mum got it free in a supermarket) and a pair
of horrible jogging trousers that had also been chewed by rats,
drinking cheap supermarket beer and hating the world. (NOTE: Steven
doesn't have a rat problem. He had pet rats he let have run of the place! I
just thought I would clear that up, because I know how our readers
think! - Editor)
Madeleine,
Anatomy of A Nightmare (1974,
Italy, Horror?, Director: Roberto Mauri)
Notable
actors: Camille Keaton! Silvano Tranquilli! Paola Senatore!
This
film starts off promising enough, with a pregnant Camille Keaton
being chased through a misty forest by a bunch of witches wearing
coloured wigs, with eyes the same colour. They torment Camille for a
bit until she sees the burning wreckage of a race car with the dead,
smouldering body of a racing car driver next to it before they carry
a coffin containing a baby doll in front of a distraught Camille
before throwing that on the fire too. While it burns, Camille sees
visions of medical staff saying that something 'is dead'.
Even though it turns out to be a dream, that's an awesome start to
the film. Turns out Camille lives in a huge villa with Silvano
Tranquilo, although their relationship isn't really clarified, there
is some sort of emotional connection there. Confusing matters is
Camille's behaviour - she seems to be able to wander around freely in
Rome, glancing jealously at pregnant women, and picking up
hitchhikers to shag back at the mansion while Silvano spies on them.
In his spare time, Silvano reads books about the human psyche, stares
into space, and randomly teleports in his garden, seemingly only to
freak out his staff.
To confuse things further, the guy who seemingly died in Camille's
dreams turns up at the house as Silvano's son and immediately gets
into Camille's pants (at least it seems this way. I had to watch this
film relying only on my dodgy command of Italian. They do go for a
topless horse ride about five minutes after meeting and I did pick up
that this guy says 'by the way' an awful lot). However, despite the
promising start, quite a lot of what happens post-dream is drowned in
an awful lot of dialogue (although you do get to see Camille Keaton
naked if she floats your boat. At least it's consenting plot-wise,
unlike that I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE
shit). It takes about forty minutes of sex and dialogue for the
weirdness to kick back in, when things from Camille's initial dream
start creeping into her waking life.
I suppose things perk up a little when the hitchhiker turns up for a
party with girlfriend Paola Senatore, at which she goes nuts and
performs are rather lengthy but not unwelcome striptease. This also
confuses things, because just when Camille and Paola are just about
to get it on, Silvano interrupts, dismisses Camille, then gets it on
with Paola. When the hitchhiker finds out, he starts beating on
Silvano, who (it looks to me) hypnotises him into killing himself?
Man, I bet David Lynch is kicking himself for not having thought of
half the stuff that happens in this film. Wait - is it too late to
say "Spoilers"?
I'm not going to spoil the twist at the end, however, and although I
found it quite fitting, I'm sure some would kick in their
televisions. That aside, this isn't a total failure from the director
of KONG ISLAND,
although you think it would be if you've ever suffered through that
crap. If you can make it through the dull middle section, there's
enough nudity and weirdness here to warrant at least one watch. After
watching this, I do understand why it only exists in Italian language
only form. There's probably not enough strangeness here for anyone to
make the effort to add subtitles.
By the way (or approposito, as they say in Italian), I've noticed
there's a tendency for certain Italian actors to be pigeonholed into
certain roles. If you want a suave rich guy, you go for Silvano
Tranquilli. If you want an academic type or a member of the clergy,
you go for Umberto Raho. Rough diamond type? Giampiero Albertini.
Rapist? Luciano Rossi.
Sexual deviant? Luciano Rossi.
Mentally unstable convict? Luciano
Rossi. Handicapped sibling? Luciano
Rossi. I don't understand how the guy didn't turn into a
neurotic anxiety-fuelled depressive. If he did however, he'd totally
be first choice to play that character in a film.
Madness
- The Eyes of The Moon (1971,
Italy, See below for explanation on genre, Director: Cesare Rau)
Notable
actors: Thomas Hunter seems to have been in a few other films.
On
the IMDb, this film's genre has been tagged as Crime, Horror and
Music. The keywords on the site also include Giallo, Eurospy (not
sure about that one), and banana. The banana bit I get, because it's
part of one of the main unintentionally funny bits in this
all-over-the-place film.
This one off feature by Cesare Rau starts with two separate plot
strands that come together about halfway through the film. Our first
and most important part involves Thomas Hunter as part of a trio of
guys who escape from an insane asylum. Thomas seems pretty sharp at
first but it slowly gets revealed that he has a real problem with
women and is totally cracked out of his gourd. The other two guys
don't matter much to the plot, because one is captured by the police
and the other guy gets struck by a car while Thomas goes to ground.
The other plot involves your usual bunch of late sixties/early
seventies hippy types, out for a good time. It was hard to keep track
of them to be honest but I think there were four women and three
guys, one of which is particularly hands-on and eager to get it on
with the ladies. In particular, he's got eyes on a foreign lady who
gets roped in to joining everyone else at a remote villa, where our
old lunatic pal Thomas ends up too. That doesn't happen for a while
though, because we've got to spend time watching some lady getting
dumped in a nightclub first, which provides us some laughs. You see,
the print on Youtube is jumpy as hell, so when we see the band on
stage playing the song "She's
A Stranger" (and you'll be hearing that a lot), the lead
singer's flute is suddenly replaced with a guitar, which now sounds a
lot less funny now that I've typed that out.
Anyway, Thomas takes his sweet sweet time getting to that villa, in
the meantime hiding from the cops, nearly strangling a prostitute,
fixing a guy's car (why put that in there?), then stabbing to death
the woman who got dumped in the nightclub in a pretty realistic
murder scene. Until the actress starts blinking. When Thomas finally
gets to the villa, he breaks in, finds no food but then finds a
squeaky banana that he finds funny for about three seconds before he
gets angry with it and throws it away before finding a wooden
crocodile which he seems more fond off. This film does get rather
bogged down in details that have nothing to do with anything.
Strangely, the tone of this film is more in line with an Eighties
slasher than a giallo, at first. A bunch of young(ish) people turn up
at a house to get wasted and have sex, and there's already a
murderous psycho in the house spying on them. While Thomas is
upstairs eating food he nicked while everyone was picking fruit, the
others get wasted as one of them pours LSD on some sugars cubes and
gives them out. Or maybe it was Polio vaccinations, because I
remember being given that on a sugar cube when I was a kid, but now
this film has got me worried that the nurse gave me LSD as a kid for
a laugh. Anyway, to prove that the actors involved here aren't very
convincing as groovy hipsters (the dancing scenes are painful), they
also give us a pretty unconvincing scene where they act like they are tripping.
The next day, the foreign girl lies dead, strangled, but who killed
her? I'm not saying, but be assured that the characters here make
plenty of stupid decisions, and we get a 'final girl vs killer'
sequence which is also very much in line with an Eighties slasher.
There's also the slight giallo element of who killed the girl, and a
couple of bizarre, and funny choices by the director to have a
sequence where a character has a flashback with a slowed down version
of the 'She's A Stranger' song (struck me as funny, anyway), and an
even stranger Benny Hill final shot of a couple driving a car that
made no sense either.
Giallo? Thriller? Banana? Who knows. Strange though, and
entertaining. Short too. This is so rare it didn't even appear on my
obsessive 'to watch' list that I've been keeping since 2017. I'm just
some guy who watches these things, but who are the people that have
these films? What else is out there for discovery?
Make
The Chicken Legs Sleep (1977,
Italy, Giallo, Director: Amasi Damiani)
Notable
actors: Gianni Dei! Rita Calderoni! Andrea Aureli, who turns up in
scores of these films even though I never mention him! Anjita Wilson
(in a hardcore version of this film called Morbid
Desires of A Countess - she isn't in the version I watched)!
If
I had a penny for every time I've written 'villa', 'rich people',
'mind games', 'money' and 'old school' in a review I'd have a lot of
pennies but very little time to count them as I'm too busy going
insane trying to home school kids during lockdown. However, this one
is a very rare film, totally unknown to me until it popped up on the
internet. I'm not even sure the title is correct, so I'm going with
Fred's translation as I'm certain he won't get distracted by a child
somehow managing to headbutt a wall while sneezing. That's my life -
I'm not making that up. (Hey, I have mice
crawling through my walls! I'm not making that up! - Fred)
We start with one of those rich people who live a kind of Brett
Easton Ellis type of lifestyle, a Countess so rich she's taken to
playing games with people, watching them having sex in her attic,
having rich people discussions about the church at parties, and
breaking up close friendships. This latter reference is the focus of
the film, as the Countess leads a communist trio of friends to one
side and declares that although their friendship and political
allegiance are strong, she bets them that the bond can be broken with
the prospect of a huge amount of money. They deny this can happen,
but the Countess then announces that there is hidden treasure at her
abandoned childhood rich folk villa, and they will betray their
values in order to get that money.
The three, including Gianni Dei from the almost gynaecology-level
study of Mariangela Giordani's genitals film PATRICK
LIVES
AGAIN, and the almost gynaecology-level study of Mariangela
Giordani's genitals film GIALLO
A VENEZIA (who passed away in October 2020, I now notice -
not Mariangela Giordani's genitals, but Gianni Dei), Rita Calderoni
(from a lot of Renato Polselli films), and Marina Hedman (from a hell
of a lot of Mario Bianchi porno films - better get her a soft cushion
to sit on judging by his favourite subject),
head to the villa and are told to expect a letter with more
information. On the way there they become familiar with the
Countesses' driver, and a discussion ensues about working for the
upper classes.
When they arrive at the villa, paranoia sets in almost right away,
with Gianni Dei succumbing to the desire for money. Both Dei and
Calderoni set their sights on Marina Hedman as a sexual object too,
and Hedman seems to be working on the driver to get information,
especially when the much-anticipated letter contains only the words
'Make the Chicken Legs Sleep'. The arrival of a stranger at the
villa, a man who says he's there to collect herbs from the garden
with the consent of the Countess, sets off a chain of murder and
deceit. Also, this isn't one of those film where the treasure is a
metaphor or anything - there really is a stash of treasure in the villa.
While not action-packed or full of gore (although you do get some
nudity), MAKE THE CHICKEN LEGS SLEEP is fascinating as it
highlights what people would do with their so-called principles when
the option of a rich, easy life becomes available. In this film,
people kill, sell their body, and double cross in order to get to the
treasure, and worse still, the Countess is right. It holds a mirror
up to society, especially in our age, when people are so ready to
choose absolutes and stick with them not matter what. People have
their opinions and ideals, but then, if someone waved a wad of cash
under their noses, how tightly would those ideals be held?
I don't think I've come across an Amasi Damiani film before, and
judging by Italian websites I've badly translated, he's one of the
more mysterious directors out there, with most of his work possibly
lost. I might have to do a bit of digging to find more films by him,
or they might just randomly appear to me due to the curse I suffer
where I have to watch every Italian film, ever.
A
Man On His Knees (1979, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Damiano Damiani)
Notable
actors: Giuliano Gemma! Michele Placido! Tano Cimarosa! Eleanora
Giorgi! Luciano Catenacci! Nello Pazzafini! Nazzareno Zamperela!
Ettore Manni!
I've
never been to Sicily, but it's been covered on television enough
times for me to know that the food looks good (apart from that deep
fried cartilage they sell), the weather is real nice and there's some
good history and scenery there. Going by this film, however, it could
well be that the Mafia will just stick my name on a hit list for no
good reason whatsoever, and therefore I may be gunned down in the
street. I've told my kids that if this happens, it's what I would
have wanted.
Giuliano Gemma is a reformed car thief who makes a living selling
coffee from a little kiosk in Palermo. One day, his friend,
bagsnatcher Tano Cimarosa (who directed the sleazy giallo REFLECTIONS
IN BLACK), grabs his arm and shows him a guy sipping an
espresso in a cafe. This man, Tano tells him, is a hitman for the
Mafia, and he's just asked where he can find Gemma. Gemma isn't as
panicked by this as Tano, but they follow the hitman anyway...all the
way to Gemma's kiosk, where Gemma's son is watching over things.
Gemma confronts the hitman (played by Michele Placido), but Placido
just claims he wants a drink and goes on his way, shortly before two
gangsters show up to collect their protection money from Gemma. We
see these two go back to their headquarters and hand the money to
Nello Pazzafini, who has about one line of dialogue before Placido
appears and kills both him and one of the gangsters.
Something bad is going down in Palermo, all due to the kidnapping of
the wife of a lawyer who worked for the ruling Mafia clan. Worse
still, she was being held in a building right next to Gemma's kiosk,
and the kidnappers were customers of Gemma. Kind cop Luciano
Catenacci, another customer of Gemma, brings Gemma into the place to
show him a corpse, but Gemma doesn't know that particular guy,
stating that he only ever brought coffee over and barely set a foot
in the place. However, that simple cup of coffee is now going to turn
Gemma's life upside down.
There's a list of eight names and Gemma's name is on there, as well
as other prominent Mafia types from a rival gang. Placido is also out
to get him, but is such a downright twisted individual he's decided
to play around with Gemma first. He says he wants two million lire in
order to call off the hit, and the race begins for Gemma to raise the
money, if he can even trust Placido in the first place. Finding two
million lire isn't going to be easy for a man with two kids who sells
coffee all day, but then there's those car-stealing skills that were
retired after a stint in jail...
It's all personal opinion in the end, but for me A MAN ON HIS KNEES
is lesser Damiani, although that doesn't mean it's crap. The acting
all round is solid as usual, from Gemma's subdued everyman trying to
think his way out of a bad situation to Eleanora Giorgi as his
long-suffering but loyal wife to Tano Cimarosa as the faithful
sidekick. Michele Placido stands out as the hitman who will literally
do anything to get his own way - lie, beg, blackmail, threaten, cry -
anything at all, including using his own mother in scams and holding
a gun to a child's head. Placido plays it perfectly (if rather loudly
at times), throwing cowardice, malice and friendliness into the same
scene. By the end I wasn't even sure that the last thing that
happened wasn't some sort of trick. I'd imagine that's what Damiani
was going for.
The problem is, it's a little wordy in places, like it contains
things that could have been cut down a little, dialogue wise, and
although other Damiani films include some action to balance things
out, this one didn't quite have enough, concentrating more on
Placido's extorting of money from Gemma and Gemma's attempts to raise
funds. Still well worth a watch though, because there are plenty of
scenes of tension and a couple of twists in the end.
The
Man Who Didn't Want To Die
(1988, Italy, Giallo, Director: Lamberto Bava)
Notable
actors: Lino Salemme! Martine Brochard!
You
know, my mamma said to me "Son, life is like Lamberto Bava's
filmography, mostly it's shite, but now and again there's a good bit
thrown in there to keep you on your toes". Is THE MAN WHO
DIDN'T WANT TO DIE one of those good bits?
The answer, as you would expect, is no. It's not the worst Bava
product out there either, but seeing as how we're comparing this to
such crap like DEMONS III:
THE OGRE, the bar is very low, so the next question is - Is THE
MAN WHO DIDN'T WANT TO DIE so stupid that it becomes kind of
enjoyable in a car crash kind of way, like PRINCE
OF TERROR? The answer is - nothing is as stupid as PRINCE
OF TERROR. Both of these are from TV series called HIGH
TENSION that Bava made, and that's literally all I know
about that.
However, that doesn't mean that this film isn't not stupid, because
the man who doesn't want to die in the film THE MAN WHO DIDN'T
WANT TO DIE is a rapist, and the way the film plays out, he's
supposed to be the guy that we the audience root for. You see, it all
starts off with a seriously injured guy being found naked and taken
to hospital. He can't speak but he can move, grabbing a junior
doctor's wrist like "he didn't want to be left alone".
Sounds like a good mystery has just been set up, right?
Well, don't get used to it because Bava basically immediately
explains what happens by showing us that this guy was part of a five
man team put together by a rich lady to rob a fancy household of all
their expensive goods, including a Renoir painting. Things are going
well, with the security guy and his wife getting tied up and shifted
out of the road, but rapist guy has his eyes on the lady, and only
takes enough time out to steal the Renoir picture for himself before
returning his attention to her. I couldn't tell if he was going to
sell it or knock one out while looking at it - he did seem pretty
turned on with it. He hides the painting in a shed on the premises
and then attempts to rape his captive, only for her husband to kick
him in the back of the head and crack his skull.
My first thought was that the rapist must have had very thin bones
for a shoe to break his skull, but you've got to kind of go along
with these things I guess. He can't speak or move, but just kind of
rolls his eyes around like he's trying to do an impression of Klaus
Kinski. Gang leader Fabrizio isn't too happy about this, pointing out
that it wouldn't have happened if he wasn't an idiot, but later
events would prove that Fabrizio isn't exactly going to be invited to
join MENSA any time soon. Still, they wrap the rapist up in a carpet
and dump him in the back of the van while Fabrizio has to murder the
guard and his wife.
Long story short - the rapist gets dumped in the woods, the gang
have to try and kill him in hospital, the rich lady discovers the
Renoir missing and the police link him to the murders, and
then...things somehow inexplicably jump forward a few months so the
rapist is well and walking around freely. I guess Bava just wanted to
get some giallo action in there because someone starts killing the
gang one by one, including a murder that would involve blindly
knowing someone's location inside a large shipping vessel, then being
able to drop a huge metal object inside the boat over the exact place
that person is located, several floors down. To be honest, the film
needed more scenes this daft. I won't go on about the giallo part of
the film, save to say there's about three people to choose as the killer.
At least the plot zips along quicker than some Bava films, but who
cares about a rapist? It's hard to create suspense for a character
you'd like to see killed anyway. I did like that Fabrizio's mother
has an eating disorder and he constantly has to bring her cakes and
sweets while she emotionally blackmails him, but that's as far as
character development goes for this one, apart from trying to paint
the rapist guy as a bad boy gone wrong in order to generate some
sympathy among the five or six viewers this film is going to have.
Basically, if you've heard of this film and know how low Italian
films sank in the late Eighties, you've basically watched this film
without watching it.
Man,
Woman and the Beast a.k.a. Spell
(1977, Italy, Drama (I'm learning on the IMDb, 'Drama' is the go-to
genre option for 'don't have a clue when it comes to Italian
cinema'), Director: Alberto Cavallone
Notable
actors: Aldo Massasso!
Number of
times I said "For Fuck's Sake!" during this film: 8
Number of
close-ups of a chicken's eye and chicken/egg references: 3,221 (Still
not anywhere near Guilio Questi's Death
Laid An Egg, which contains over nine million chicken/egg references).
I've
heard this one is Pope Francis' favourite Italian film, which he
watches regularly while smoking crack and laughing that God has
cursed us all with Coronavirus.
There seems to be some sort of message buried in Alberto Cavallone's
mental MAN, WOMAN AND THE BEAST, but I'm having a bit of
trouble working out what that is. In fact, I get the feeling that
there are many messages and themes in the film, be it from some sort
of commentary about the hypocrisy of people who outwardly appear good
and follow religion but indoors act out their basest human desires,
or that humans, despite their outer layers of socialising,
ceremonies, and dancing, are all just smelly animals that fart and
crap everywhere. It might be some attack on religion in general,
considering the jaw-dropping act performed at the end of the film. Or
it just might be that Alberto Cavallone wanted to film loads of sex
and crazy crap and call it an arthouse film. He did go on to direct
porn in the eighties, including the film BABY
SITTER (You're killing me, Steven! - Fred), where a
student is asked to look after a kid who turns out to be a sex-crazed
dwarf (It's out there on the internet if you look hard enough).
Cavallone died at the age of fifty-nine after having wanked himself
to death.
Plot isn't something that this film is overly concerned about. It's
more about a bunch of stuff that happens to some people in a town
that is celebrating some sort of patron saint. I suppose the main
focus is on a communist fellow who does collages of naked woman and
medical journals. It's weird enough when the film opens with this guy
dreaming of watching himself being dug up from a grave, but when he
wakes up to see his wife sitting on a potty, peeing and staring at
him, I guess that's the point you'll decide whether or not to bail
out of this one, or maybe a couple of minutes later when she eats her
dinner in the toilet and drinks toilet water. Or a few minutes after
that when the local butcher gets so turned on by watching the local
teenage girls that he goes back into his shop and shags a beef
carcass that was hanging in the back!
We also get introduced to the farmer guy after a prolonged, detailed
scene of a cow giving birth. He's a total dick to his wife, who is
fed up making him fried eggs and dreams of a better life. Some solace
in that department arrives in a Jesus like drifter who gets involved
with most of the characters in this film, be it becoming a hero to
the local kids, shagging most of the female cast, or the last scene,
which...I'll get to later. I can't remember if we first meet him via
the pervy cop who likes to hang out with the local hooker (whom
Jesus-guy also gets to do some horizontal bopping with), or if it's
via the daughter who's leaving town because her dad got her pregnant
while the two of them were sitting next to her grandfather's corpse.
At her instigation! I've got to admit that the look of guilt on Aldo
Massasso's face is priceless, and that this film is so dirty, one of
the actors has the word 'ass' twice in his second name.
This frankly ridiculous film just keeps zapping at you with the
obscene imagery and madness that some of it comes across as
(possibly) unintentionally hilarious. There's a drunken night of
debauchery where a woman lies naked on a billiard table and a guy
pots a ball up her fanny, which means that Lucio Fulci probably stole
that bit for GHOSTS OF SODOM.
Also, to quote Stephen King's book The Regulators, "I don't
know who the other two are but the one in the middle looks like
Willie Nelson." You can see why the general intended message of
this film can get lost when grown men do running headbutts at one of
those 'see how hard you can punch' machines or there's a painting of
a woman only with tits for eyes and a fanny for a mouth. Or when a
guy is performing a bit of cunning linguistics on a lady only to turn
around and have what looks like half her pubic hair stuck to his
lips. I was pissing myself laughing at those bits, and the bit where
the communist guy did a photo montage that made it look like a naked
lady was giving birth to a fully grown Vladimir Lenin. It was just as
well no one walked in while I was laughing, because I'm not sure my
daughter would have found it funny to see a cow's eyeball hanging
from a fanny. I did though.
All this, and the many other bits I've either forgotten or not
mentioned on purpose, is like a pleasant afternoon tea with your
grandparents compared to the ending, when Jesus gets it on with the
communist's crazy wife. Now, it's going to be hard to describe this,
but during the act of tender, sweet love, she suddenly craps into the
guy's mouth. Fake or not (I'm going with fake for sanity reasons) I
have never been so glad to be watching a washed out, blurry copy of a
film in my life. Mercifully, the film ends shortly after. Either that
or I passed out.
So there you have it. It's one of those films I guess where you can
write endless bollocks about Grand Guignol and dadaism and such like,
or you could just laugh at how far out there this film goes to
offend. People compare this to Pasolini's SALO,
but I wouldn't know because that looks like a right load of crap.
Maybe that's Cavallone's message - outrageous arthouse films are a
load of crap force fed to the audience.
Many
Wars Ago (1970, Italy, War,
Director: Francesco Rosi)
Notable
Actors: Gian Maria Volonte! Pier Paolo Capponi! Giampiero Albertini!
Daria Nicoladi!
You
don't get that many films about World War One in comparison to World
War Two, and you certainly don't get a lot of films about Italy's
involvement in the War. The Alpine Front sounds just as a horrible
and nasty as every other front. Better scenery I guess, but I'm sure
that wasn't a priority to the countless youths blown up or
machine-gunned in futile frontal attacks on machine gun posts.
It's in the Alps the film takes place, although I'm unsure of the
exact year as there were about twenty battles pretty much in the same
area over the course of the war. The Italian Army has been ordered to
abandon a mountain, but is then immediately ordered to retake it. The
men are understandably upset about this, but General Leone won't
accept anything but courage from his men, even if it means making an
example of them over and over again. On the side of the men are
officers Pier Paolo Capponi and Gian Maria Volonte, who repeatedly
acts as buffers between the insane orders of the senior officers and
the crushed spirits of the men.
There's not much background to many of the characters, and I think
this was done on purpose. All the infantry are burned out by the time
we meet them, and still they are thrown into battle over and over
again, until even the Austrian defenders beg them to 'turn back -
stop committing suicide'. The soldiers don't have a choice, however,
as their own machine guns are trained on their backs. It's death in
either direction and to quote from a British soldier involved in the
Battle of High Wood during the Somme: "You had to go forward
because at least you had a chance to stick a knife in the person
shooting at you".
There are grumbles of rebellion among the soldiers, and as the
orders to attack despite little progress, who will even survive long
enough to rebel?
This realistic, horrific film is kind of like an Italian PATHS
OF GLORY, only with a bit more action (if you can call it
that when people are basically slaughtered). Both Volonte and Capponi
are pretty intense as the officers who know how futile the situation
is, and the whole film rolls along pretty quickly, just like the
never-ending attacks ordered by the top brass. The only female
character is Daria Nicoladi, who puts in a quick cameo as a nurse
tending to a wounded man following a particularly costly attack,
which also happens to be a turning point for a previously loyal soldier.
Don't expect a happy ending. There's also a nasty bit where a
soldier has his face totally destroyed and just kind of lies there
while Volonte screams for him to be given mercy.
The
Masked Thief a.k.a. In
the Name of The Father, The Son, and The Colt (1971, Italy,
Western/Giallo, Director: Mario Bianchi)
Notable
actors: Craig Hill! Agata Lys! Frank Bana!
Now
this is a genuine mix of Giallo and Western, with a masked killer
brandishing a knife and wearing black gloves and everything. It's not
that great though. Not terrible either.
The film starts with a prologue involving a stagecoach being robbed
by a load of men in drag, led by a leering Craig Hill . He takes
particular interest in the daughter of clothing salesman Pick
(Francisco Sanz, from several thousand other Spaghetti Westerns),
taking her to the side and raping her while his men laugh and taunt
her father.
Four years later, Pick and daughter Tony (Agata Lys - you'll have to
watch the film to find out why she's called Tony) return to the same
general area, hawking their wares in town. The sheriff of this
particular town bears a striking resemblance to the bandit who raped
Lys all those years ago. Pick spots this almost immediately, but who
do you go to if the man you want arrest is the head lawman? Maybe
that deputy who has it in for the sheriff, but there's other stuff
going on here too.
Most important of all is the recent murder of a mask-maker who was
murdered after creating a special mask for a client. Complete with
POV shots and everything, this guy gets a good old knife to the guts
before the black-gloved killer takes the mask and heads off. The same
masked killer also gets involved in a robbery and kills all his hired
goons straight after, but there'll be more killings and a very
lengthy chase scene before we find out who it is.
Things are looking pretty bleak for the sheriff, and it isn't his
fault. You see, he's got a twin brother who loves robbing and raping
and he's back on the scene, seemingly in cahoots with the masked
killer. Looks like things are building up steam to a Halloween heist
complete with shoot-outs and guns that never run out of bullets, but
when do they ever in Spaghetti Westerns?
This is Mario Bianchi's debut as a director, and not a bad effort at
that. Both the Giallo and Western elements are blended quite well,
including a scene with the killer moving around freely as the
townsfolk hold a masked ball to celebrate Halloween. He doesn't quite
get things to build up a full head of steam however, concentrating
more on the mistaken identity thing that involves Craig Hill playing
twins (not a spoiler by the way). He did better with his second film, KILL
THE POKER PLAYER, with the mystery becoming the whole focus
of the plot. I'm not sure if Bianchi made another Giallo/Western mix,
because he's credited for directing over one hundred films and I
haven't got the time to track them down, so I'll never know if he
tried to blend Giallo with other genres, like his porno film WORLD
CUP '90 (where nymphomaniacs help the Italian football team win
the World Cup by sapping all the energy of rival teams), his
historical murder-fest porno THE CASTLE OF LUCRETIA (where
someone on the IMDB has left a very detailed review to read), the
innocent sounding porno AT HOME WITH PENIS (the same guy's
left a review of that one too - he must look like a fucking boxer
crab with all the porn he watches), and THE FLYING DOCTORS,
which is not the Australian drama programme, but yet another excuse
for - hang on I'll read THE SAME GUY's review - threesomes and bumming.
Master
of the World (1983, Italy,
History?, Director: Alberto Cavallone)
Notable
actors: Aldo Sambrell!
An
Italian QUEST FOR FIRE
rip-off that I found on YouTube. It certainly ups the gore stakes for
sure, but it also certainly ups to bore stakes too, at least in the middle.
Back in the days of the caveman, it seems that instead of going out
to see a film or perhaps settling down next to the fire with a nice
book and some Sun Ra on in the background, early man would spend his
Friday evenings worshipping a bear's head and pulling his enemies
brains' out of their decapitated heads to eat. Thus begins the story
of...Buddy...the cave man from the Bee Gee tribe who has just managed
to escape the brain eaters.
He's wounded though, so it's just as well a girl from another tribe
takes a shine to him and heals him, right before a bunch of guys come
to kill him. A bear, who we're going to see a lot of, steps in for a
playful fight too and rips off a guy's face. The rest think Buddy can
control the bear and put him in charge of the tribe, but this doesn't
last long as Buddy is giving yet another girl the glad eye, which
ends in him running across the land being hunted by Aldo Sambrell and
his tribesmen while the first girls' tribe turn up now and again to
take on the bear and Aldo Sambrell.
There's no dialogue by the way, and, after a while, that's what bogs
the film down a bit. A love triangle thing develops between Buddy and
his two women, and its all kind of hard to keep track of everyone
when they look like Robert Smith from The Cure in a loincloth. Things
do eventually resolve themselves in a gory fashion that involves a
couple of brutal decapitations, a face gouging, a birth and a baby
being anointed with blood.
My attention did drift around the half hour mark so be warned.
This is the first Alberto Cavallone film I've watched, but having a
quick look over the IMDb, it looks like this might be his tamest
film. There's an Alberto Cavallone channel on YouTube if anyone's interested.
May
Morning (1970, Italy, Giallo [kind
of], Director: Ugo Liberatore)
Notable
actors: John Steiner! Jane Birkin! Rossella Falk!
Here's
something that's not normally produced by Italy - a film of mind
games and trickery set in Oxford University, where just about every
character is a horrible example of a human being. I suppose I would
file it under the giallo genre, mainly due to the film containing back-stabbing
and people messing with each other's head (like PARANOIA
or ORGASMO),
but then that might just be down to me being lazy and not being arsed
to break every fucking film I see into never-ending sub-genres.
Ugo Liberatore brings us the story of Valerio, an Italian student
who has found his way into Oxford University, but isn't quite
settling in due to his fiery temper and the fact that British people
tend to cling to tradition like barnacles. Valerio could join the
Blues, Oxford's premier rowing team, and this would allow his various
academic shortcomings to be overlooked, but Valerio hasn't really
figured on the general xenophobia of the institution he's found
himself in. Or the fact that upper-class people are mental (believe
me, I'm saying this from experience! Not that I'm upper-class. I was
born in a council skip and actually dragged out by a rabid mongrel
dog who had rabies).
Valerio is known as one of the 'hearties' due to him being on a
rowing team, as opposed to the 'eggheads', of which John Steiner is a
part of. Problems arise in the form of Steiner's girlfriend Jane
Birkin, who has the hots for Valerio. When an attempt at sex is
rumbled by Birkin's mother (Rossella Falk, who also wants in on the
action with Valerio), Birkin's rage at rejection and Steiner's rage
at Valerio putting the moves on his girlfriend set off a tit-for-tat
battle where Johnny Foreigner isn't going to get one over on the
English establishment with their unseemly behaviour and genetic
insufficiency. It's like the whole Brexit thing boiled down to a
bunch of early Seventies hippies trying to one-up each other.
Although mostly interested in the dramatic aspect of things, Ugo
Liberatore (who directed the mental DAMNED
IN VENICE, which Fred covered very well) throws in a lot of
giallo tropes that keep things interesting. The film is very
colourful and the cinematography very fluid. People try and have
ordinary conversations while holding back the malice in their eyes.
At one point, Valerio walks in on his tutor (who is also Birkin's
father) brushing the long hair of a wig, suggesting he may be
trans-sexual. The whole film is full of little touches like this.
Plus, there's a very Beatle-esque soundtrack permeating the entire
film to compound the general contemporary feeling of the film.
Best of all is Steiner as Roddy, monocle-wearing Roddy, who is set
up to be a racist student, but subtly comes across as a victim in the
whole tale of Valerio. He is presented as scheming (typical of a
Steiner character) but as the film unfolds it becomes apparent that
Valerio is just being a dick in general. He asks Steiner if he thinks
one of his mates is 'queer', to which Steiner answers "It's none
of your business, nor mine", and later still Valerio tries to
generalise women as being all the same, prompting Steiner to call him
out once again. I love it when we get restrained John Steiner as
opposed to mental Steiner. In fact, the best bit of this film is when
Valerio has the chance to make up with Steiner, but ends up losing
his temper (again) and destroying all of Steiner's poems, so in
retaliation Steiner stands up calmly, grabs a book, a throws it
straight at Valerio's head, hitting him right between the eyes! I'm
guessing there wasn't much acting involved in the beating he receives
straight after this.
So, another off-the-radar, hard to pin down film from Ugo
Liberatore, who gave us the quasi-giallo THE
SEX OF ANGELS (also good), the not-so-good BALI,
and the soon to be reviewed by me BORA BORA.
I passed through Oxford once on the way to Bognor Regis. It looked
great, you couldn't park anywhere, but there were some very nice food
trucks selling falafel. That's totally relevant to a film review,
don't you think?
Mean
Tricks a.k.a. Hornsby
and Rodriguez Challenge The Criminals (1992, Italy, Crime,
Director: Umberto Lenzi)
Notable
actors: Charles Napier! David Brandon! David Warbeck!
Charles
Napier, the actor who always looks like he's growling at everybody,
gets to go macho and take on South American drug dealers in Umberto
Lenzi's last film. And it's good!
Good in comparison to other Umberto Lenzi films of that era, I must
add. At this point in the history of Italian cinema, we must take
what we can. He may have not plummeted to such depths as Lucio Fulci
with his SWEET HOUSE OF HORRORS,
but have you seen WARTIME?
Jesus. Napier is a guy who has quit the FBI and headed to the
Southern part of the America's looking for his old buddy David
Warbeck, and on the way there he dreams some exposition where Warbeck
is wounded trying to stop some big bad drug dealer, who is then
killed, maybe, in a boat explosion. Get used to that because at least
three scenes involve witnesses being shot right before revealing a
major spoiler.
Rumours are going around that Warbeck is on the take but when Napier
confronts Warbeck in an open patio area, Warbeck is quickly gunned
down by a bad guy (see what I mean? It also shows you that Napier's
character doesn't learn because it happens to another guy not much
later too.). Napier tries to make out that Warbeck and the other guy
killed each other, but this doesn't fool plucky young cop Rodriguez,
with his sexy young secretary Iris Peynado. Rodriguez think that both
Warbeck and Napier were into something together, and Napier's going
to have to prove that isn't the case, by punching Rodriquez in the
mouth and not shooting him or some shit.
Eventually, these two team up to find out what's really going down,
as it seems that the dead drug dealer isn't dead at all, but he has
had extensive plastic surgery, so there's a bit of a guessing game
going on in the plot as to who specifically is the bad guy, and
Napier's going to have to gun down a shitload of bad guys in order to
find out. And boff that secretary in his down time. Plus, also
convince her to go undercover as an escort girl so that she can get
the drop on the bad guys and be a nice hostage for the bad guys later
in the film.
It's your typical early ninties/late eighties action film to be
honest, but Lenzi digs deep and gives us plenty of murder, gunfire
and sexy ladies, plus despite being an old fart Napier can play quite
the tough guy. I don't know if Lenzi just retired or gave up on the
industry, but this is a decent enough film to go out on, so fair play
to him. Tragically, although Lenzi had a healthy retirement, he was
gunned down outside his apartment in Rome by the family of that
muskrat that he killed during CANNIBAL
FEROX. Tell Deodato it was just business, Lenzi!
The
Medium (1980, Italy, Horror, Director:
Silvio Amadio)
Notable
actors: Sherry Buchanan! Philippe Leroy!
Way
off the radar, this one. It's a kind of haunted house film to a
certain extent, albeit coming from a different angle.
A widower and his young son are struggling to cope with the loss of
their wife/mother. The widower is also a composer of soundtracks (as
common a job in Italian film as being a taxi driver is in the UK) and
he's given a gift by his painter sister-in-law for inspiration - a
scary oil painting of women in torment. It's not long after that
strange things start happening around the house, with the noises in
the attic and his son acting out in weird ways. He also starts being
plagued by visions of a woman in a burning car, but what can it all mean?
In our house we always have an evening where we sup wine and
reminisce about the scene in NINJA
TERMINATOR where Ninja Master Gordon receives death threats
from a toy robot, so I was tickled pink to see the same make of robot
turn up here in a similarly sinister role! The sister-in-law gives
the kid a toy robot for his birthday, but the kid is getting bad
vibes from his aunt and even goes so far as to destroy the robot,
which then turns up fully functional some time later. The composer
thinks he's going nuts, but its only when the kids starts acting very
strange that he called in Paranormal investigator Philippe Leroy!
We first see Philippe at the very start of the film, jawing about
how the spirit lives on after death etc etc, so he's the perfect guy
to be brought in to fight the evil forces that I've been struggling
not to reveal throughout this terrible review. The best bit in the
film is when Leroy turns up much earlier than usual at the composer's
house, only for the composer to find out that Leroy is still at the airport!
It's all very low budget but I've got to hand it to Amadio - he
takes the old ghost story cliches and stirs it up with that '70s
fascination with the paranormal. Sherry Buchanan doesn't have much to
do though, except scream at a dead dog.
Miami
Cops (1989, Italy, Eurocrime,
Director: Alfonso Brescia)
Notable
actors: Richard Roundtree! Harrison Muller! Maurice Poli! Alberto
Dell'aqua! Ottaviano Dell'Acqua!
Surely
by the time MIAMI COPS rolled out of the Italian movie
industry, Alfonso Brescia's score for directing films based in and
around the Bay of Naples was in triple figures? Here, he replaces
teary crooner Mario Merola with goofy Harrison Muller and Lucio
Montanaro's ear-piercing screaming with the laid back cool of Richard Roundtree.
This cheesy Eurocrime film doesn't start in Italy, mind you. It
starts in what I guess is Miami, even though it doesn't look like
Miami. In fact, we first get treated to a prologue where Harrison
Muller's cop father gets double-crossed and murdered by his partner,
which drives Muller into joining the cops to find his dad's killer.
That's a good enough premise, and having Muller play his own dad was
a good move too, as they just grey his hair up a bit and give him
glasses and a moustache. Muller snr puts in a good shift at the docks
taking down drug smugglers, but when his partner decides to keep the
cash and the drugs, it's curtains for dad.
As this is an Italian film, there's an undetermined amount of time
that passes before Muller joins the cops and is partnered up with
Richard Roundtree, whose nickname is PO (for Pissed Off). The rest of
this paragraph requests that you cast your mind back to any Eighties
film where a rooky cop is partnered with a salty veteran, because
that will save me the time of describing the initial interactions of
this odd couple. Basically, Muller messes up at a robbery, then earns
Roundtree's respect at a following kidnapping while also doing a
little undercover work to investigate his father's death. When Muller
rescues a guy who has been thrown into the sea (that either came out
of nowhere or I missed something), the two cops get their big break.
Now, I thought that Muller's dad's murderer would still be part of
the cops, only older, but Brescia must have decided that things like
plot twists would just complicate the film a bit, so he just has the
guy from the prologue now occupying the island of Ischia, just off
the coast of Naples. This gives the two cops a chance to head over
there, which I'm guessing saved a bit of cash for Brescia by way of
location shooting. Around the same time, Muller also meets a young
girl studying the Etruscan language who seems to be everywhere Muller
wants to be, and yet his suspicions are not raised even once. Dumbass.
I might be suffering from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome from having
watched so many Alfonso Brescia films (Twenty-three at a rough guess)
but I didn't hate this film. It has that late-Eighties craptastic
charm that a lot of Italian films have from this era. The action is
steady enough, although haphazardly thrown together. The music is
that smoky saxophone style jazz we'd expect from any film produced at
this time, and Roundtree may be no Fred Williamson when it comes to
attitude and sass, but he still delivers. And, to be fair, his fight
sequences are much more convincing than Fred's BLACK
COBRA stuff, where it looks like he's doing a bit of dad
dancing. If you know Fred Williamson, don't tell him that.
There's a couple of car chases and even a bit of gore thrown in for
good measure. Plus, as we're talking Alfonso Brescia, there's that
blunt disregard for continuity, so you can witness Muller and
Roundtree emerging from the sea practically dry after swimming to
shore following a boat chase, or even see a corpse having a wriggle
around to make itself comfortable during a warehouse gunfight. Every
day's an adventure in the world of Alfonso Brescia. And that's my
review of Shaft in Ischia.
Midnight
Blue (1979, Italy, Horror I
guess, Director: Raimondo Del Balzo)
Notable
Actors: Giancarlo Prete! Antonio Cantafora!
Woohoo,
another LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT
rip-off. I got sick of rape/revenge films DURING LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT,
fast-forwarded through most of I
SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, and only watched LATE
NIGHT TRAINS, HOUSE
ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK and LAST
HOUSE ON THE BEACH because of my moronic decision to watch
every Italian film ever. Now here comes another one, like a bit of
shit that comes poking out of your arse long after you got rid of the
rest, and are now standing in line at the bank.
Luckily, director Raimondo Del Balzo pretty much fucks everything up
by not including much torture or violence against the women, and not
much revenge either. In fact, the entire first half of the film
doesn't contain any of that crap at all. It involves three girls
training for the Olympics, one of whom, if I may mention for no
reason, is training for the javelin event. These three are tired of
topless bathing at the beach with all their mates and want to go off
on their own to an Aunt's villa nearby. This they do, despite the
warnings of a more attractive team mate that doesn't get involved.
Off they go, and do whatever it is girls do in huge villas (I admit
to drawing a blank here so I might have passed out, or it may be that
literally nothing happens in this portion of the film). Whatever. In
the end the three girls head off to the beach to sunbathe topless and
run into three fellows - hunky, moustache wearing Antonio Cantafora
(from SHADOW OF ILLUSION),
rugged Giancarlo Prete (from weirdo art film THE
LONG NIGHT), and some other guy who has a pot belly and is
going bald (well, they can't all be winners I guess). Although fairly
put out that these fellas would be ogling the fat rascals on display,
the girls are easy going and invite the guys back to the villa.
Things pretty much work out for everyone in the short term, as they
all hang about drinking, having knife/javelin throwing contests on
the beach, and moustache guy gets lucky with one girl in the shower,
and then in bed, in a scene that goes on forever. Turns out the other
girls are actually in a same-sex relationship, but thems the breaks
for the other two guys. Things take a turn for the worst when one of
the girls spies the front cover of a newspaper declaring a manhunt
for (etc etc - you all know this bit).
When the guys discover that they've been discovered, they hold the
girls hostage, and...don't really do much else I guess. A bit of
glaring, Prete gets to watch one of the girls take a shower, then
there's some implied rape. It's all bollocks really. Nicely film
bollocks though, with a Stelvio
Cipriani score.
The revenge bit doesn't come to much either. I was taken aback by
the use of the javelin but once again, that's about it. There's a
scene at the end where the director seems to imply that all men are
rapists, but I was beyond caring.
Monkeys In The Attic (1974, Canada, Drama? Director: Morley Markson)
I
think I'm taking the 'review films Fred wouldn't go near' brief a
bit too far with this one. MONKEYS IN THE ATTIC is agonisingly
pretentious and annoying, and a true endurance test for anyone daft
enough to try and watch it.
The plot involves four artistic people who share a house together,
and what happens between them over the course of one night. I can't
be bothered finding out what their names are, but there's the very
French-Canadian actor guy, slightly less French-Canadian dancer lady, not-very-French-Canadian
angry man who listens to recordings of his girlfriend, who doesn't
seem to be French-Canadian but does look a bit French.
Now, over here in Scotland we have the Edinburgh Fringe Arts
Festival, where performing artists from all around the world flock to
show of their talents (or lack thereof, in about ninety-percent of
cases). This loud, screaming, expensive mess goes on for about a
month, but this year, like everything else, it's been cancelled due
to the Coronavirus. The plot of this film is what I imagine is going
on around the world right now - a bunch of performance artists,
trapped inside a flat, without an audience, going mental.
The characters in this film dance around their house while others
play music. Clothes come flying off without warning. One actor stands
naked on a stool with a megaphone covering his balls before asking
"Is dinner ready?" (It's not, but the dancer making it is
wearing a salad strainer on her head). "I wonder what it's like
to be covered in banana skins?" One person asks. Two of them
dress up as Ronald McDonald before the guy pretend rapes the woman.
At dinner, one woman put her head into her soup while the others
applaud. And on and on and on it goes...
The only, and I mean only, event in the film that would constitute a
plot is the turning up at the door of a pizza guy, who is sucked into
this world of non-sequiturs, screaming monologues, shitty dream
sequences and crying that makes up the rest of the film. Then it just
kind of ends.
If you want weirdness, then you get that, but weird for the sake of
weird is just tedious. If you want nudity, you get that too. The most chin-stroking,
arthouse loving film fan would have a hard time separating the
symbolism and metaphors from this crap. Consider this a serious warning.
The
Monster (1977, Italy, Giallo/Comedy,
Director: Luigi Zampa)
Notable
actors: Johnny Dorelli! Sydne Rome! Renzo Palmer!
From
the director of the off-beat Eurocrime film THE
FLOWER IN HIS MOUTH comes a giallo that's also referred to
as comedy, but to me it didn't contain any more humour than Dario
Argento's THE BIRD WITH
THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. It's satire of the genre in the
beginning, but the ending to this film is one of the darkest I've seen.
Johnny Dorelli plays a divorced journalist who has never had that
one scoop that would send him to the big leagues. His desk at work is
situated right next to the office toilet, his ex-wife thinks he's a
failure, and only his son seems to respect him. In fact, when the
film opens both Dorelli and his son have just finished watching a
giallo in a cinema (decorated with posters for SPASMO
and the great DESTRUCTION FORCE),
but then his son has to witness and argument between his warring parents.
At a low ebb, Dorelli attends work the next day to find a letter
sent to him by someone called The Monster, who says they are going to
kill a much-loved children's television personality (who is an
asshole in real life). When the grumpy old bastard gets his head
smashed in, Dorelli is first on the scene, doesn't take any pictures,
and gives the letter to the police. This does not please the owner of
the newspaper, nor his power-hungry son, so when he receives another
letter from The Monster about the next victim, Dorelli is ready to
record every aspect of the next murder, even to the detriment of the
intended victim, but the newspaper sales propel him up the ladder,
and the media magnate's son proves to be quite the exploiter...
THE MONSTER is a piss-take of journalism and the lengths the
media will go to in order to boost sales, but it's also a bona fide
giallo all the way through. There's a big Argento influence on the
film, with loads of quirky characters, like Renzo Palmer's lipstick
salesman whose business gets a boost from the killer using his brand
at the murder scenes. He also keeps turning up at various points
acting like he may be the killer, scaring the crap out of Dorelli and
his son. There's also a policeman who hates Dorelli's guts as every
crazy person in town strolls into the station to claim they are The
Monster, and is also driven nuts when Dorelli publishes a story about
a theory regarding where the killer plans to strike next.
It's not overly gory, but giallo fans should enjoy the mystery here,
with plenty of clues and twists, and I've got to admit that the best
thing about the film is actor Johnny Dorelli, who is unknown to me -
he runs the whole spectrum from bitter and acerbic to smug, and when
the humour totally drops out of the film in the last twenty minutes
or so, numb and empty. Very good turn from that fellow.
Strangely, Ennio Morricone's soundtrack didn't really register this
time around, but I wonder if he wrote the song that Sydne Rome sings?
Who knows. Watch out for a blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameo from
professional ugly actor Salvatore Baccaro as a werewolf.
The
Morbid Habits Of A Governess
a.k.a. Crazy
Desires Of A Murderer (1973, Italy, Giallo, Director: Filippo
Walter Ratti)
Notable
actors: Corrado Gaipa!
"Arse
Candle" was a phrase I thought was only used for laughs in
Chris Morris' TV series BRASS
EYE back in the nineties, but in this giallo, it turns out
to be true! This mix of sleaze, giallo tropes, and police
investigation doesn't quite deliver, but is quite the journey anyway.
This is one of those giallo deals where a lot of people gather at a
remote castle so they can all be bumped off in gory fashion, but then
this film can't quite decide what direction it's going, so you get a
bit of Eurocrime thrown in too, and some Gothic action as well. In
the remote castle lives a crippled Baron and his mute,
taxidermy-obsessed son who suffers from GICMT (Or
Giallo-Induced-Childhood-Memory-Trauma). Visiting are the Baron's
daughter and various hipster types, including Greta (who looks like
Carla Mancini, but isn't Carla Mancini), another blonde girl, three
guys, two of whom seem to be involved in some sort of drug smuggling
racket which rather diverts the plot from the giallo action.
There's also the hired help to be concerned with, which includes the
maid (who likes to boff the mute brother), a stern-faced butler type,
and a drunken doctor who seems to be pre-occupied with injecting
people with sedatives. Once this lot are together, the film settles
in as we watch various people pair off with each other, and now that
I think about it, not much of it has much bearing on the story. The
blonde girl who isn't the Baron's daughter hits it off with the drug
dealer guy, which leads to him getting a cheeky glint in his eye and
moulding a candle into a shape which is heavily implied to be rammed
up the girl's chocolate starfish. (NOTE TO FRED:
If I die suddenly please delete this review before my family come
sniffing around for examples of stuff I achieved in life).
Post-coitally, this girl gets stabbed up and her eyes pulled out, as
well as her expensive necklace getting nicked. This prompts an actual
actor to turn up in the form of Corrado Gaipa (from ILLUSTRIOUS
CORPSES, SHADOWS UNSEEN
and some obscure film called THE GODFATHER).
Corrado goes into full Poirot mode and interviews everyone involved,
which is pretty entertaining until you realise it's eating into the
old "Gloved killer murdering people" time.
I'm serious. A lot of the more typical gialli involve set-piece
killings, one after the other. What we get here is competent police
investigation, followed by a crime sub-plot, flashbacks, and then
eventually some more giallo murders (about ten minutes before the
film ends). Strangely, I didn't think that was too bad a thing, as
the film also has the odd surreal sequence, like a stop-motion strip
scene, and a sex scene where one embalmed owl turns to have a better
look. When the murders do happen, they are gory, and there's plenty
of sex thrown in too, so there's not much to complain about here.
I had to track down an Italian language version of this one, but it
was released in English at some point on video in the UK at least.
Morel's
Invention (1974, Italy,
Sci-Fi, Director: Emidio Greco)
Notable
actors: John Steiner! Anna Karina! Ezio Marano!
If
you know nothing about this film and are interested in weird
pseudo-science fiction films, you'd probably be best stopping reading
now and tracking down the film, which is on YouTube just now. I'm not
going to spoil anything about it in the review, but it's a film best
experienced without knowing a single thing about it.
MOREL'S INVENTION has been on my watch list for years. Apart
from the usual gialli, horror and Euro-crime, I like to stick films
on there I like the sound of, and just like the equally
weird-sounding ECCE HOMO (BEHOLD
MAN - THE SURVIVORS), MOREL'S INVENTION stood out. I
knew nothing about it, but it sounded weird enough to track down, and
it was worth it.
Be warned: Thirty-three minutes pass before anyone speaks in this
film, but that doesn't make those minutes boring, because this is a
film where both the protagonist and the viewer have no idea what's
going on.
A dishevelled man known only as The Castaway ends up on a island
that has a strange building on it and not much else. The interior of
the building is covered in years and years of dust, but The Castaway
finds a book that takes his fancy, and also finds a false wall that
he breaks down, a wall that was covering up a giant machine. The
Castaway has a bit of a fiddle about with the machine, then gets on
with more important stuff, like finding water to drink.
All we know about The Castaway is that he's running from something,
so when people start appearing on the island, dancing to old music,
The Castaway is naturally skittish, but when he starts seeing Anna
Karina walking around, he gets brave enough to approach her.
Strangely, she acts as if he's not there at all, as if a man in torn
clothing wouldn't stand out among immaculate looking tall, skinny people.
Tallest and skinniest of all is John Steiner, whom The Castaway
hears referred to as Morel. The conversations The Castaway hears are
a bit strange (and ambiguously worded), and when he hears what sounds
like the exact same conversation two nights in a row, things get
rather bizarre, as he becomes a spectator to some very strange goings
on indeed...
That's all you're getting plot-wise as this is a film that you just
kind of let roll over you. There's no blood or gore, not even a nude
body, but the entire atmosphere and tone of the film is fascinating
(and current too). The Castaway's incredulous investigation into the
island is pretty creepy, as he explores an abandoned landscape then
reels in terror as it comes to life, and John Steiner does well as
the arrogant and stoic Morel. You can't say the guy didn't diversify.
Sometimes the roles he picked were wrong, like the hilarious DEPORTED
WOMEN OF THE SS SPECIAL SECTION, or just plain crap, like
the never-ending hippy nightmare BALI,
but when he gets it right, it's cinema gold.
There's a creepy soundtrack and the cinematography emphasises the
isolationist feel of the film. It actually reminded me in places of
Peter Greenaway's A ZED &
TWO NOUGHTS, but that will only make sense if you see the film.
The
Moro Affair (1986, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Giuseppe Ferrara)
Notable
actors: Gian Maria Volonte! Bruno Corrozzari! Umberto Raho!
Aldo
Moro was Prime Minister of Italy in 1978, during the 'Years of
Lead', and this film details what happened to him after he was
kidnapped by extreme left-wing terrorists going by the name of The
Red Brigades.
Now, Scotland is divided into various political and ideological
factions just now but they are easy to categorise - the Nationalists,
Unionists, Remainers and Leavers, but I have no idea how anyone in
Italy could distinguish between socialists, communists, The Red
Brigades, and whatever other left wing factions seem to be kicking
about there during the seventies and eighties. It may have easier on
them all just to do what I do - categorise people into two groups:
"Annoying Arseholes" and "Less Annoying Arseholes".
These Red Brigades people are angry and shoot up a bunch of cops
when they grab Moro, taking him to a flat in Rome, chuck him in a
secret room (I'd love to have one of these - I wouldn't tell the wife
and kids about it either), then put him on trial for some sort of
crime. Moro's group are the Christian Democrats, who are
'centre-left'. I know nothing about Italian politics. Meanwhile,
Moro's colleagues in his party are running about like headless
chickens, trying to find him and caught up with their own agendas.
This is the second time Volonte has played Moro, having played a
parody of him in Elio Petri's TODO MODO
ten years earlier. Here he plays Moro as a calm, almost resigned
person who seems to realise his fate far sooner than even the people
who have captured him. Maybe the guy was like that in real life. I
could try asking the Italian guys in my work but they're only
eighteen and probably don't give a fuck about anything from so long ago.
It's one of those 'acting' films and not trashy, but still good.
Bruno Corrozzari is especially grim-faced in this one.
The
Mushroom a.k.a. The Killer Strikes At
Dawn (1970, Italy/France/Switzerland, Giallo, Director: Marc Simenon)
Notable
actors: Alida Valli! And some French folks perhaps.
This
kind of tame murder mystery is only really notable because it's set
in Switzerland and has Alida Valli enjoying psychedelic mushrooms
that fuels her artistic creativity. She also keeps a monkey in a
secret cupboard in her room, but if that bit was explained I missed it.
The main character of the film is Dr Eric Calder, a man with enough
childhood trauma to fill about five or six gialli. You see, when he
was a kid, his mother used to abandon him all the time. To make
things worse, the Second World War was going on and his mother
couldn't even be bothered looking after him during a bombing raid.
Eric's got abandonment issues up the wazoo, so this doesn't help his
relationship with his young, free-living wife Anne, who is often away
filming commercials and leaving Eric to go crazy on his own. Both
these actors seems to have lengthy careers and may be well known, but
I cannot be arsed trying to spell their names correctly. It's bad
enough with the Italian ones.
The only things entertaining Eric is his medical practice and the
crazy antics of Alida Valli, who often calls him over to talk jibber
jabber about her art and get sleeping tablets off him. She also has a
little fancy for Eric, which annoys creepy son Gaetan, who might have
a bit of an Oedipus complex going on. There's also groundskeeper Kurt
who's also milling about the place, and it's easy for everyone to get
into each other's business as Alida insists that every door in the
house remain open at all times.
It's when Anne works away overnight on their wedding anniversary
that sends Eric into a depression. Getting wasted, he receives a
phone call from Alida to get his ass over to her place. Sensing that
he might be in there, Eric agrees to share some crazy mushroom juice
with Alida, leading to a psychedelic sequence that only appear in
roughly ninety-seven percent of the films made around this time. The
next day, Alida has been strangled, Eric is back home, and his
memories of the night before are very hazy indeed...
This is one of those films where the police are actually competent
enough to round up all the suspects and question them - Eric, his
maid, Gaetan, the groundskeeper, and when Anne returns from her trip,
she notices that Eric seems to be cracking apart at the seams and is
also the main suspect in the case. I guess that happens when someone
sends the police a note that says 'Eric is the killer'. And when Eric
lies about what he did that night.
The problem is that Alida Valli plays the most interesting character
in the film, and when she's gone, it's just a dull police procedure
with Anne also figuring stuff out while Eric goes crazy. It's not bad
or anything like that, but it needed something in there to boost the
energy levels a bit. Oh well. The mystery isn't that hard to solve
either and I didn't like Gaetan's haircut. Next!
My
Body In Anger (1972, Italy,
Drama/Giallo, Director: Roberto Natale)
Notable
actors: Peter Lee Lawrence! Massimo Girotti! Silvano Tranquilli!
Man,
it seems that as a pastime in Italy in the late sixties and early
seventies, folks were either involved in crime, political activism,
or hanging around in some villa, hotel, or mansion, playing mind
games with each until some sort of violent event occurs. Guess what
this film involves?
It's the latter. Usually money motivates the psychological warfare
devious folk would wage on (mostly) Carroll Baker in these sorts of
films, but here, young Silvia seems to be messing with her folk's
head just because she wants to. Her parents, especially her father
(played by Massimo Girotti, most familiar for BARON
BLOOD), are stuck up, and don't know quite how to deal with
her. She's an ex-drug addict and has just returned from rehab in
Switzerland, but her parents aren't quite ready to bring her home, so
instead they are all holed up in a hotel in Sardinia. Silvia knows
that her parents don't want her to bring shame on the family by way
of scandal, and she plays up to that by messing with their heads, so
much so that they bring in psychiatrist Silvano Tranquilli to examine her.
Silvano doesn't have much luck because Silvia messes with him too,
claiming that all the Roscharch images shown to her are nonsense. To
be honest, Silva comes across as a spoilt brat who may act brazen,
weird and confident, but hasn't quite figured out she's got major
daddy issues. Just before I was about to gouge my eyeballs out with
boredom, Peter Lee Lawrence (from the rather good giallo LOVE
AND DEATH IN THE GARDEN OF THE GODS) turns up as young guy
hiding out on the hotel grounds because, as he tells Silvia, he's
killed a woman and is on the run. Due to this being a film and not
real life, or possibly because it's the early seventies and young
people in cinema at that time are annoying subversive types, Silvia
thinks that's cool and the both of them hit it off...for about five
seconds before they start messing with each other's minds too. Is
love in the air or are other motives coming into play?
These films, where nothing much happens, seem to be ten a penny in
the sixties and seventies. Films where next to nothing happens for
the entire duration of the film. People have dinner together and
talk. People stand on beaches looking out to the sea and talk. They
hide in hotel rooms and talk. And what they talk is shite. Silvia
acts like such a smart arse. Going on and on about her father and
winding Lawrence up by leading him on then blowing cold with him (or
switching the lights off and blinding him with camera flashes). Who
was the intended audience for this film? It's not arty enough for the
arthouse crowd. It's not sleazy or bloody enough for the giallo crowd
(although I read somewhere that there were sex scenes that were cut
out of the film), there's not even enough drama to make it a soap
opera. It vaguely follows the late-sixties Lenzi film template, but
in the most bland, eventless way possible.
There's two things this film does right. The cinematography is
rather nice, and the music by Stelvio
Cipriani is rather good too. Other than that, I've got nothing
more to add.
My Crasy Life (1992, USA, Documentary (kind of), Director: Jean-Pierre Gorin)
I
totally understand that a bunch of young guys with nothing to do
might stake some sort of territorial claim in the area they live in
and form some sort of gang around it - we pretty much did the same
things back when we were teenagers, but the whole notion of staying
in that life, killing for it and deeming it more important than your
own family is beyond me. Mind you, I stopped doing all that crap when
I was about fifteen and looked old enough to get into a pub, and we
didn't have all the cool stuff like guns, and rap music, and tattoos
(although I did know one guy who inexplicably had his own name
tattooed inside his mouth!).
MY CRASY LIFE claims to be about a Samoan gang from West L.A.
(they sure love referring to their geographical location in the L.A.
metropolitan area), but while watching it you start to get the
feeling that something just isn't quite right about it. The
interviews seem to be normal, where one gang member interviews
another, asking probing questions about how he would feel if his
family were killed by accident, how he feels about how he's treated
his mother, but there's entire sections of this film that come across
as at least partially scripted, and now that I've did a little
research, I've discovered that they were.
This is most obvious when one gang member mugs a guy for his wallet,
but there's the two gang members who have left the 'hood to go and
work in Hawaii where it's also obvious there's some sort of script
going on, but this doesn't make the film any less watchable. It
probably helps in fact, because for all their talk of shooting things
and hitting up and such like, this lot spend an awful lot of time
sitting about playing cards and not doing much at all. Most of their
day seems to involve playing Trumps, drinking, smoking, shouting
"Westside!", talking about the old times, shouting
"Westside!", rapping, and shouting "Westside!"
There's another parallel story where a Samoan cop takes an interest
in a gang-banger in prison and heads off to trace his family. This
doesn't really lead anywhere, but it does introduce the bizarre
narrative device of the psychopathic on-board computer that taunts
him constantly with a creepy voice. This judgemental computer seems
to imply that the cop has some sort of romantic interest in the
gang-banger, and then later also implies that the computer fancies
the cop. Usually this is set to some creepy music while the cop
patrols the streets at night. This generally pushes the film from
'documentary' territory to 'fucking weird' territory as this computer
seemingly looks down on everyone involved in the documentary and
basically acts like a mix between HAL from 2001
and Hannibal Lecter if he was in the prison cell next to you,
indulging in a never-ending character assassination of you in an
attempt to drive you insane.
I don't claim to know anything about LA gang culture and I know even
less about Samoa, and the film, while entertaining, didn't quite
enlighten me much either. In fact, the most glaring question left
unanswered is where did the gang get those huge bottles of beer from?
I want some!
Westside!
Oh, and I only know about this film due to it being sampled by
Cabaret Voltaire for their melancholy ambient track 'Low Cool'
My
Friend, Dr Jekyll (1960, Italy,
Comedy/Horror, Director: Marino Girolami)
Notable
actors: Ugo Tognazzi!
Light
hearted stuff here the director of ZOMBIE
HOLOCAUST. We get to the horror part of the film right away
when a mysterious caped man and his assistant kidnap a young lady
from a park in Rome and take her to a underground laboratory, where
we see a goose barking like a dog and a cat making bird noises.
Turns out the dude who kidnapped the girl is a mad scientist who has
figured out a way to transfers the minds of creatures into other
creatures, and using the girl he kidnapped, he transfers her mind
into the mind of the assistant. The girl wakes up as a huge fat man
but doesn't seem to notice, chatting away about how she is lost in
Rome with nowhere to go, but soon her mind returns to her own body
and she is taken back to the park. Best not to ponder the science
behind this, but the reason is obvious. The scientist is so ugly and
horny he's needs a way to stop woman being terrified of him.
Luckily for him his lab is situated across the road from a place
that would give a British seventies television presenter a nosebleed
- a reform school for drunken hussies, where mild mannered, repressed
teacher Ugo Tognazzi works with his equally repressed girlfriend
Malfada. Ugo's all about teaching those girls (including last night's
victim of the scientist) all about keeping those skirts long and the
'primal urges' in check...that is until the scientist gets a hold of
his body and turns him into a wild sex maniac. Don't get too excited
though, this film is from ninety-sixty, so there's not much by of
nudity or the old rumpy-pumpy.
The film thankfully doesn't veer into the cringe-inducing antics of
those CARRY ON
films either, instead relying on Ugo Tognazzi's skill at balancing to
different characters - the red-blooded, partying 'Jekyll' character
and the very confused teacher who faces a lot of fallout in the
morning. Backing him up comedy wise is Carlo Croccolo as a private
detective hired to find out what's going on, who dons various
terrible disguises throughout the film and invariably gets himself
beaten up.
Strangely watchable but very dated and entirely from another era
(Jekyll's hands-on antics would have him sharing a jail cell with
Bill Cosby these days and at one point the private detective joins a
band of black and white minstrels), MY FRIEND, DR. JEKYLL is
notable for being one of the earliest Italian films where someone is
attacked by a rubber bat. It's probably notable for other things too,
but that's the main thing I take away from it. I suppose there's also
the message that you can get away with shagging your mother-in-law if
you are possessed by a crazy scientist. Jolly japes indeed.
My Nights With Susan, Sandra, Olga and Julie (1975, Holland, Horror (perhaps), Director: Pim De La Parra)
Well,
this is a weird one. In Holland, somewhere, two young hippy chicks
get bored of throwing rocks at swans (eh?) and hitch a lift from a
middle-aged American guy driving by. The younger of the two girls
gives the old guy the come-on, and while he's pumping away the other
girl gets jealous and cracks his skull open with a bottle of whisky.
Getting bored, the two dump the guy in a pond and run off to the
cottage where they live with some other weirdos, not knowing that the
local crazy woman has witnessed everything.
In the cottage lives Susan, who once bought the cottage to be alone,
but now has a bunch of stray people living at her house. One is
former lover Albert, who has gone nuts and now lives entirely in a
cupboard. He does however have a little spy hole where he watches
Sandra and Olga, the two murderesses who constantly taunt everyone
else in the house, as well acting like cats in heat every time
there's a man around. There's also Julie, who sleeps most of the day
and spends most of the night in the cupboard with Albert, Walking
innocently into this madness is Anton, who was merely sent to Susan's
house to pick her up for some appointment.
Sandra and especially Olga are on him like ferrets, which almost
earns him a skull-bashing, but it's really Susan who's captured
Anton's eye. Deciding that a houseful of very strange people is a
great thing to experience, Anton settles down for a while with a view
to seducing Susan, but he gradually finds out that Susan doesn't
quite like to face reality so much, which is why things like murder
can take place almost right under her nose. In fact, the only person
who seems to know everything that's happening is crazy Pyit, whom the
girls mercilessly taunt. Pyit seems to seek vengeance for the man's
murder, even retrieving his body and keeping it in her shack. She
never utters a word for the entire film but kind of steals the show.
Plus, now the police have started sniffing around too, but Susan just
doesn't want to know...
This beautiful looking film is hard to categorize. The murderous
girls are portrayed as so joyously smug and evil that they seem to
constantly get off on winding everyone up and using their sexuality
to manipulate the men around them (although Anton manages to fend off
the more aggressive Sandra). This seems to be down to Susan, who is
so caught up in caring for the crazy Albert that she's become blind
to everything else going on around her, and with everyone getting
naked and getting it on every five minutes, it's like a soap opera
written specifically for Red Tube, or, possibly, just an everyday
Dutch soap opera that I happened to watch by accident.
There's loads of nudity and an almost giallo-like use of colour
here, mixed with a David Lynch-style atmosphere. Apparently this Pim
De La Parra fellow is quite notorious, so I'll have to seek out more
films of his. For academic reasons, obviously. Which reminds me,
there's an awesome threesome bit in this film! Jeeves - pass the kleenex!
The
Mysterious Mr. Van Eyck (1966,
Spain/Italy, Giallo, Director: Augstin Navarro)
Notable
actors: Massimo Girotti! Tere Velazquez! Others!
This
film seems to be undeservedly obscure, because it's a fine early
giallo involving double crosses, sudden plot twists, groovy music,
and yachts!
Yes, yachts, which means it belongs to the micro-sub genre of gialli
that take place on or around yachts, like INTERRABANG,
TOP SENSATION, and THE
SEX OF ANGELS, which are all worth tracking down. This one
has a plot that unfolds slowly, and I'm kind of loathe to reveal too
much, so let's keep this brief.
Two guys who work on a boat for some rich dude reflect on their life
while their boss is onshore. One of them is innocently accepting his
lot in life as a guy who works on a boat, whereas the other guy is
smoking his bosses' cigars and drinking his whiskey. While he's doing
so, a young sexy lady randomly boards, looking to hire a boat for her
and her husband, Charles Van Eyck, a semi-famous diver. Our imposter
Daniel pretends he's the owner of the boat and ropes in his innocent
mate Santi along for the ride.
It becomes apparent very shortly that the Van Eycks don't get on
very well. She can't stand to have him touch her, and he can't stand
for anyone to get a look at the map he holds on his person and
secretly consults, but where is the map leading him and why is it
such a secret? I'm not saying, but Charles better watch out, because
his wife (if she is even that) is after what he wants, and she may
very well use her new friend Daniel to get it.
Charles does a bit of diving but turns out not to be as ignorant as
he makes out, knowing fine well that his wife and Daniel may be
conspiring against him. That said, he doesn't reckon on getting his
head crushed in an accident, and it's when Charles bites the dust
that the real twists start revealing themselves, and I'm not going
any further to reveal them, so you'll have to seek out this film for yourself.
Containing a small cast in a very small location, it's impressive
how director Navarro manages to ring suspense out of nearly every
scene. You never quite know who trusts who or even what the whole
purpose of the sailing trip is all about, as it seems at first that
Charles Van Eyck is looking for some sort of treasure, but then it
turns out to be something totally different. It's hard to write about
this without majorly spoiling things though, so I'm saying nothing
more about the plot.
For such an obscure film, the version I watched was in HD in
widescreen, so somebody out there must like it. Spanish gialli are so
hard to come by online for some reason, like THE
GLASS CEILING and THE
CORRUPTION OF CHRIS MILLER, two films I count myself lucky
to have found, that I'm happy I managed to find this one. I didn't
even know it existed until a few days ago, when I found it on
YouTube. Imagine going back in time and explaining that to an earlier
version of yourself in the Eighties.
Mystery
To The Rules a.k.a. A Case Of Mystery
(1988, Italy, Giallo, Director: Stefano Roncoroni)
Notable
actors: Paolo Malco! Marcello Bazzuffi! Remo Girone!
Bored
politician Sergio is mooching about his apartment one night when he
spots some gangsters having a shoot-out with the cops. Things seem to
blow over pretty quickly, but when Sergio and other tenants go
outside to have a look, Sergio seems to be the only one who spots the
briefcase hidden under a car. Returning later in disguise, Sergio
retrieves the suitcase and finds it's filled with money - Three
billion lire in fact.
Sergio hides the money in his apartment, but is shocked the next day
to open his shutters and find a dead body staring up at him, along
with cop Marcello Bazzuffi. Sergio keeps tight-lipped about the
money, and with his mate Paolo Malco, heads off the Switzerland for a
holiday with his family. On the way there however, two guys in
disguise hold Sergio at gunpoint and steal all his luggage, so who
has twigged that Sergio has the money? Whoever it is, they are going
to have to try a lot harder to get to the cash, because Sergio is a
lot tougher and stubborn than he looks.
While the film has a nice premise and looks all set to have Sergio
chased around for the cash, not much else happens for the remainder
of the film. Sergio goes to Switzerland, gets searched at the border,
stops to look at a dog, meets his family, talks to his wife, goes to
a dinner party, acts all huffy, goes off and stares at things, goes
up in the hills and stares at things. I began to wonder if I'd
stumbled onto some sort of drama instead of a giallo. Now and again
the film threatens to get exciting, then Sergio goes off and smokes a
cigarette and stares at something.
Some sort of plot eventually emerges in the last twenty minutes as
someone breaks into Sergio's apartment and a couple of twists creep
in, but this is an extremely low energy film, with little action or
plot. The only bit that's any good at all is the mind games that
Marcello Bazzuffi and Sergio play with each other as the cop tries to
get Sergio to crack about the money. Other than that, this film is a
bit of a waste of time.
Rare, too. The only copy I could find was in Italian with English
subtitles, but with some Russian people translating the film as well.
I guess no one can be arsed released a cleaned up copy.
Naked
Companion (1977, Italy, Drama,
Director: Bruno Pischiutta)
Notable
actors: The majority of the people in this film don't appear anywhere else.
I'm
beginning to think I'm taking this Ten Foot Pole concept a bit far,
because this is a film that not even a ten foot pole would touch with
a ten foot pole. It's terrible!
I knew I was in trouble right away when I was greeted with a full
five minutes of shots from various angles of a woman's face, and then
the credits started. What followed was a hideously pretentious
cavalcade of mixed messages with some sort of commentary about
feminism getting mangled in the process. Plus, lots of zoom shots of
arses and an extremely dubious sub-plot about a teacher feeling up
the pupils.
Sandra (I think that was her name) has been married to Claudio for
eighteen months and seems to be getting a bit antsy. Claudio on the
other hand is one of these hilariously over-stated sexist characters
that crop up from time to time in Italian cinema (for example Carlo
in STRIP NUDE FOR
YOUR KILLER or the gym instructor in Fulci's AENIGMA).
When she arrives home one night, Sandra can't wait to tell Claudio
all about this exciting new political group that she's met, but he's
watching the football and can't be bothered listening to her, except
to comment that if someone is a woman they can't be intelligent, and
if they are intelligent they can't be a woman.
To further prove that he's one of life's good guys, Claudio is also
getting it on with a client he's met through his estate agency
business, a business that gives him loads of excuses to go off for
days on end. Unfortunately for him, someone has let Sandra in on the
secret, but rather than confronting him about it, she goes off an
jumps into bed with Melisa, part of the left-wing group and also a
teacher who likes to get it on with the pupils. This triggers one of
many flashbacks throughout the film (in fact, the film is one long
flashback, so there's often flashbacks within flashbacks) where we
see one of her pupils/lovers getting it on with an older man.
In fact, it might worth pointing out here that Melisa has many
complaints about her getting touchy-feely in school, but rather than
face any kind of consequence for her actions, she just blackmails her
boss into not saying anything about it and the plot just rolls right
on! You go ahead and molest those pupils, Melisa! That's messed up
right there. Luckily in Britain during the seventies our kids where
all safe in school, because all the paedophiles were working in
children's television and on radio at the time. Except that one guy
who was a teacher, then a weatherman.
You see, I thought this film was about how badly men treated women
and Sandra's voyage of self-discovery through free sex, drugs, and
shitty beatnik poetry, but by the time we'd had a bondage session, a
gang-rape, and whatever that crap was at the end with the pretend
orgy, I had no idea what the point of the film was at all. Plus,
don't get all excited about the bare arses and boobs and that - it's
all done in the most terrible way possible, with people just sort of
writhing about, nuzzling each other's necks. Also it's the seventies
so they all probably stank of shit.
The director must have thought his film wasn't annoying enough and
therefore made only the prologue and epilogue in colour, with the
rest being monochromatic or black and white. That's probably why the
soundtrack was pretty much the same track played over and over again
too, just to wind me up just a little bit more. The whole thing plays
out like a misguided student film, albeit one where the director has
convinced the actresses to get naked. I need to watch something good
just to wash this one out of my mind.
Necropolis
(1970, Italy, Bollocks/Horror, Director: Franco Brocani)
Actors whose
families were kidnapped in order to force them to appear in this
film: Bruno Corazzari! Tina Aumont! Pierre Clementi (also known as
'Russel Brand, travelled back in time')!
Excerpts
from How To Make Your Pretentious Arthouse Film Even More
Unbearable For The General Public, by Franco Brocani.
1) Make the incomprehensible film nearly two hours long to
prolong the agony.
2) Make every scene last twice as long as the longest scene
Jess Franco ever filmed. The scene in this film where a lady
discusses her marital problems while her husband calls for silence
lasts longer than both the World Wars combined. Plus every season of M*A*S*H
Also, make it apparent to the viewer that there are only about six or
seven scenes in the entire film so that they can have plenty of time
to plan out how they can kill themselves once the film is finished.
3) In order to make sure your film is totally impenetrable to
the viewer, film it in four different languages so the only person
who has a chance of understanding what's going on is the actor Peter
Ustinov, who actually died through auto-suggestion when he was asked
to view this film.
4) Don't actually include any plot, but make the film vaguely
about sex, prompting reviewers on the IMDB to suggest that King Kong
and Satan appear in the film, which never fucking happened (unless I
mercifully passed out during those bits). All you get is a scene
where a hippy blathers on about Leonardo De Vinci, Bruno Corazzari
playing a despondent Frankenstein monster who relays a speech in a
monster voice that goes on forever (but is pretty funny), Pierre
Clementi being decorated with all crazy shit, some woman complaining
about her husband forever, and then the same woman talking to a ghost
guy while a giant fabric cock just stands there.
5) Have the soundtrack consist of tape machines being reeled
back and forth forever in order for the viewer to go crazy and start
chopping at him/herself with a razor ala that guy in HELLBOUND:
HELLRAISER II.
6) Label your effort 'horror' so that stupid bastards like me
track it down.
Night
With Cries (1981, Italy,
Horror, Director: Ernesto Gastaldi)
Notable
actors: Mara Maryl! Luciano Pigozzi!
It's
a haunted house film without a house, a sequel of sorts to the
giallo LIBIDO,
and it's Mara Maryl's first acting gig since 1971's THE
LONELY VIOLENT BEACH. It's also pretty obscure, the only way
to see it being a horrendous copy on YouTube. I'll explain more about
that later.
Five people - psychic Bridgitte (Mara Maryl), her husband Luciano
Pigozzi, soon to be rich Eileen, her lover Paul, and his on-the-side
lover, hold a séance so that they might discover what happened
to Eilieen's brother Christian, who vanished nearly ten years to the
day. Brigitte can see what happened to Christian - it looks like some
supernatural force killed him (a knife basically floats of its own
accord, and even the telephone moves away from him as he tries to
call for help). That's all Brigitte can see, but the rest want to
know who actually killed, and where his body went. Eileen especially
needs to know as she due to inherit his fortune.
The next day everyone heads out into the woods a Paul and his
lover/assistant are sizing up the land for development. This is where
things get strange, as their car disappears (and reappears, then
vanishes), someone finds the knife used to kill Christian, and Paul
starts seeing Christian wandering about in the distance. It also
seems that every road they take to escape from the woods leads them
back to a weird rock in the middle of the woods. Soon enough, people
start turning on each other.
Brigitte and Luciano keep recalling the night Christian disappeared,
and the flashbacks use scenes from the excellent 1965 giallo LIBIDO
that they both starred in. Seems that night someone took both of them
out of the picture so they couldn't help Christian, but who is the culprit?
Things get stranger as Paul's young lover vanishes, and when her
corpse is found, she seems to have aged ten years. Time seems to
start slipping and tempers fray as we finally find out who killed
Christian and why...
This ultra-low budget film exists only in one form - a terrible
print on YouTube. It's okay for the first forty minutes or so, but
then for the next twenty another film keeps cutting in and the screen
freezes over and over again - It doesn't look like we miss too much
during this time, and luckily I got to see what happens to all the
characters and the end of the film. I nice cleaned up version would
be good, however. It's no classic but it would be good as a double
bill with the classic LIBIDO.
Maryl still plays the ditzy character of Brigitte from the first
film, and Pigozzi was no spring chicken to begin with but does well
here as the grumpy old man. There's almost literally one location for
the entire film and it looks cheap, but its interesting to see what
director Gastaldi can do with a low budget.
O-Bi,
O-Ba. The End of Civilization (1985,
Poland, Sci-fi, Director: Piotr Szulkin)
Notable
actors: Jerzy Stuhr! Loads, probably.
Much
more grim than it's predecessor WAR
OF THE WORLDS: NEXT CENTURY, the plot of O-BI, O-BA
centres around a group of humans all living in a huge concrete vault
following a nuclear war. Things are not going so well, as food is
running short, mental health has deteriorated badly, and the vault's
walls and ceiling are about to crack, exposing the survivors to a
whole load of radiation and a nuclear winter. Some of the people
actually welcome that happening, which is not surprising considering
the conditions they live in.
Not wanting to die any time soon is Soft, the guy appointed to lift
people's moral using any means, including making up fake salvation in
the form of The Ark, a mythical machine that most people believe will
come and rescue them from their subterranean nightmare. Soft has to
listen to the people reverentially gibbering on about something he
made up, while his insane boss rants at him and he sells cutlery on
the black market just in order to get a luxury - an onion.
Life is pretty much hell for everyone down there, from functioning
people like Soft, to insane librarians who keep books only covering
the subject of the mysterious enemy who nuked the country, to a
friend of Soft who keeps dragging him away to see his 'Eden', which
turns out to be one of the grimmer parts of an already grim film, to
the strangest of all - a bunch of almost catatonic people who wander
around a huge hall being fed a strange type of bread from a tube that
hangs from the ceiling, the source of which is one of the few
satirical parts of the film.
Visually it's a nightmare too. The vault (which reminded me very
much of the horror-filled vaults of the Fallout game series) are
badly lit with blue neon lights hanging from the ceilings and the
walls. Worms crawl along the floor and the walls crumble. Everything
is pretty monochromatic except for where Soft's potential love
interest lives, which is more warm and red. Not that she spends much
time in it, as instead she's doing a trapeze act over the hall of
catatonics. In fact, this is the second bluest film I've ever seen,
because no one's going to top Derek Jarman's film BLUE
in the blue stakes. It's on YouTube just now if you're interested. Be
warned - it's a blue screen for the entire film.
O-BI, O-BA. THE END OF CIVILIZATION is also on YouTube just
now with English subtitles and is highly recommended by me. Every
actor does this film justice, bringing the right amount of panic,
hysteria, mania and rage to the screen, which is exactly how anyone
would act when faced with total oblivion. The ending is rather
spectacular too.
I haven't mentioned much about the plot because there's loads of
little surprises thrown in there that I don't want to spoil. You can
guess what the director is taking the piss out of, so no need to go
into detail about it.
Obscene
Desire a.k.a. The Prophecy
(1978, Italy, Horror, Director: Guilio Petroni)
Notable
actors: Marisa Mell! Chris Avram! Victor Israel! Lou Castel! Laura Trotter!
Finally,
I managed to track this one down. Be warned, this is a film that can
be easily ruined by comparing it to a film that it's similar too, the
same way the film THE
MURDER MANSION can be ruined by comparing it to a certain TV
show it resembles. I'm not going to include spoilers in this review,
but I would still advise just watching the film while you know
nothing about it as the best way to approach this film.
From director Guilio Petroni, who gave such great Westerns as DEATH
RIDES A HORSE and A
SKY FULL OF STARS FOR A ROOF, comes a late entry into Gothic
horror that piles on the mystery and actually manages to provide
answers to all the questions raised before the end (unlike the film EVIL
EYE, which could have been a masterpiece if the end wasn't a
massive "up-yours" to the audience.). Here we have the
usual Gothic setting of an old villa with suspect staff, dark
secrets, and a family cemetery. Who knows what we would do without
one of those in a gothic horror?
Marisa Mell is the newly married wife of Chris Avram, who is now
moving the couple into his childhood rich-person villa/castle. Here,
Marisa Mell finds not only the corpse of staff member Michele, of
whom she is told "He was old", but she also finds that the
remaining staff member is Victor Israel in full 'socially-distancing'
eyeball mode. Avram claims Israel is harmless, but the guy seems to
be playing major mind games with Mell, while Avram seems to be deeply
shaken by the death of Michele and becomes withdrawn.
Lacking attention, Marisa meets fellow American Peter Clarke (Lou
Castel, who seems drawn to this kind of film like a moth to a light
or a former glam rocker to a child). Peter claims to be an
anthropologist researching ancient curses in the area, and in
particular one that centres on Marisa's husband's family, It's around
this time that reality starts getting a bit pliable for Marisa, as it
turns out she's pregnant, and it's also around this time that we are
privy to a serial killer preying on hookers in the area, which
results in some splattery gore. Israel starts receiving phone calls
that reveal he's up to something, and then Marisa's dreams start
getting very weird as she sees a supernatural figure out in the
darkness and may even have been visited by an Incubus at some point.
I'm not talking anymore about the plot so you can spoil that for
yourself, but what we have here is a pretty well made horror film
that somehow hasn't been given the proper attention. There's not much
by way of gore with the exception of the hooker murders, but there's
tonnes of atmosphere and mystery with Marisa at the centre of some
sort of shenanigans that neither she or us are privy too, and that,
plus the moody cinematography, are what makes this film rather
enjoyable. There's loads of gothic stuff going on here, from the
sinister servants to the hidden rooms and the weird-ass shots of the
servants giving Marisa a birthday cake.
Fans of either Marisa Mell's naked body or Chris Avram's arse will
be happy to know that both feature prominently here. One other
observation is that Lou Castel always looks like he's rolled out of
bed two minutes before shooting was supposed to start. He pretty much
looks like that in every film I've seen him in.
Obsession
(1943, Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Luchino Visconti)
Notable
actors: Clara Calamai! Massimo Girotti!
Remember
that bit in DEEP RED
when Carlo's mother shows David Hemmings a load of old pictures and
talked about how she used to be an actress? She wasn't kidding!
Obsession is one of those films that shows that sometimes desperate
people make bad decisions and perhaps shows us, the viewer, that we
too are only one step away from completely ruining our lives by doing
something dumb. A classic noir film full of moody cinematography, OBSESSION
is quite rightly seen as a great film, with it's depiction of people
trying to enjoy life while in the middle of a catastrophic war, the
Italian love of music and food rising above all, and how you've
always got to reap what you sow. Now that I'm done praising the film,
let's get down to what really matters - making sarcastic comments
about the actions of the characters.
Giovanna (Clara Calamai from DEEP RED
and a shitload of films from the thirties) is a young wife who
doesn't love her husband (Guiseppe) and only married him because she
had no money and hated having to drift around mooching food from men
(for sex, it's implied). Her husband is a big fat loudmouth who owns
a roadside bar/restaurant and thinks the man of the house is in
charge, doing such romantic things as having Giovanna dry all the
sweat off him after he's cycled home or generally moaning about her
homemaking skills. Luckily for her the hunkiest drifter in all of
Italy has just shown up at the bar, and the first thing he does is
give Giovanna a smouldering look and asks her if she'll cook him a
meal. Then he asks her again, because she doesn't answer the first time.
The drifter is Gino (Massimo Girotti from MOTEL
OF FEAR) and he pretty much senses that Giovanna's got the
hots for him right away. It's a pity her husband is bouncing around
the place loudly shouting that she better guard the chickens because
there's a shifty-looking hobo lurking about the place, but Gino
manages to wangle his way in there, using his mechanical skills to
fix Guiseppe's truck and various other technical issues and it turns
out Guiseppe is a very trusting fellow, because about ten seconds
later he heads off fishing with a local vicar. Gino pretends to work
on a water pump for a second or two before Giovanna lures him into
the house with a song, siren like. Then they passionately make
love...probably. This is a film from nineteen forty-three so you
don't get to see anything.
Turns out when Guiseppe says he'll back soon that means he'll be
fannying about in the countryside most of the day while Giovanna and
Gino get it on. This gives Giovanna plenty of time to tell Gino her
life is shit and she hates Guiseppe's big fat arse and asks Gino to
stay with her forever, which comes across to me as kind of moving a
bit fast but then again there was a war on and such like. Gino agrees
to stay, but Guiseppe make things unbearable for both of them.
Gino wants to hit the road with Giovanna but she can't face a life
of uncertainty again, so they sadly call it a day and Gino goes back
to drifting. It's here he meets The Spaniard (Elio Marcuzzo, who was
killed shorty after World War Two by partisans. Not shot as it says
on the IMDb, but hanged and buried alive when the hanging didn't
work, merely for translating some documents for an employee of a
fascist group, even though he was anti-fascist himself). The Spaniard
bales Gino out of a bad situation and takes him under his wing
(there's a lot of homosexual undertones here, mainly due to
Marcuzzo's gentle performance as The Spaniard). The most likeable
character in the film, The Spaniard gives Gino some sage advice after
finding out about the affair. "Run as fast as you can from the
direction of Giovanna". Gino, however, thinks he knows better.
Fate brings the love triangle together when Gino meets Giovanna and
Guiseppe as Guiseppe is entering a singing contest. The two lovers
find that they can't stay away from each other, but neither is
willing to budge on how their future could be. That's until Guiseppe
gets very drunk and insists on driving back home. The next day,
Giovanna and Gino are explaining how Guiseppe crashed the truck, but
the police are sceptical. Can their love prevail over all and their
dark secret stay hidden. Well...no.
Now, if I killed someone I'd want no one to find out about it by not
ever mentioning it ever, but Giovanna and Gino simply don't know how
to do this. First Gino has a screaming argument with The Spaniard
which rouses the suspicions of a policeman hanging around, then an
open conversation about it in front of hired staff, then Giovanna and
Gino have a very vocal argument about it in a town square, then Gino
just outright confesses to some random girl he met. Oh, and Giovanna
writes a confession down, changes her mind, then scrumples up the
paper and tosses it to the side. At least they tried their hardest to
keep it a secret.
Even though the film goes on forever, the run time doesn't become an
issue due to the acting and the whole look of the film. How they
managed to make this during a war is beyond me, but time wise it
looks like they managed to get it complete before the allied
invasion. Credit to both lead actors for both managing to look
smouldering, I was going to say that Clara Calamai is very easy on
the eye, but saying an Italian actress is attractive is like saying
that water is wet, so why bother?
I've never seen THE
POSTMAN ALWAYS
RINGS TWICE (either version),
neither read the book by James Cain so the plot was all new to me,
but then again Luchino Visconti hasn't read the book either, so I
guess that's why James Cain gets no credit in the film. Probably just
a huge coincidence.
One
By One (2014, Drama [there's that
all-purpose label again], UK, Director: Diane Jessie Miller)
Notable
actors: The Rik Mayall!
Have
spend almost my entire life being a Rik Mayall fan, I was gutted
when he suddenly died. When I was a kid he'd appears on kid's TV
doing the linking bits between cartoons (where I learned from him how
to move one eye at a time), later on he'd appear in THE
YOUNG ONES or THE
COMIC STRIP PRESENTS (A
Fistful of Traveller's Cheques being an outstanding episode
there). He starred in THE
NEW STATESMAN in the late eighties, and although he didn't
have much success with THE DANGEROUS
BROTHERS, he and Ade Edmonson struck gold with BOTTOM,
which I went to see live three times. My now wife knew I was the one
for her when I told her how big a fan I was of Rik Mayall, and we
even managed to get him to sign his biography and wish her a happy
birthday during a book signing. We went to see him play THE NEW STATESMAN
on stage, and some Noel Coward play he starred in too (where Robbie
Coltrane was in the audience with his son).
Rik died young, of
what might have been a heart attack. Sad days indeed, but even sadder
when I notice conspiracy theories about him dying because of some
sort of message he was trying to get across to 'warn the people' of
how the government was going to invent a cataclysm in order to
control people and reduce the population. Either that or how he's
explaining 9/11 was a set up. Now, whether or not you believe that
was a set-up or coronavirus is fake (I have no opinion on either),
I'm pretty sure you don't cover up a guy trying to wake up the people
to a conspiracy by killing him and drawing attention to a low-budget,
so-so film that no one was ever going to watch in the first place.
I've watched it to see what all the fuss was about so theoretically
assassinating Rik Mayall kind of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?
Plus, I was convinced this was a joke so I did a Lisa Simpson-like
'scanning for sarcasm' and no, people believe this.
Anyway, the plot itself concerns one Dione, a wannabe children's
writer working in a cafe in an English coastal town. She's happy
because her best mate is the cafe owner's daughter, but her policeman
boyfriend Jeff isn't happy because he's one of these dicks in life
who keep nagging their other half about getting better jobs and shit
like that. Dione would rather hang about with her pal Lily and much
sexier, less uptight John, which makes Jeff jealous to the point
where they split up. Dione goes to live with Lily, who seems to be
part of a conspiracy group consisting of herself, her dad, this John
guy, and Rik Mayall. They all believe that there is an upcoming
conspiracy to reduce world population, but are not sure in what form
that'll take, be it the military, or some sort of biowarfare lab
developed virus. They are also types who seem to think that its a big
revelation that religion, sport, race, gender are such like are used
to control the population, and that people need to wake up. Not that
they attempt to wake many people up because they all sit around
jawing for almost the entire duration of the film. It's like THE
MATRIX, only Dione is Neo and Rik Mayall is Laurence
Fishburne, if Laurence sat around raising an eyebrow now and again,
playing Jenga, and eating pasta bake.
I wouldn't say the film is a complete failure, but it's not exactly
a roller-coaster ride either. Sure, there are slight (and I mean
slight) comparisons with the shit storm we're all living through now,
and those who love a 9/11 conspiracy will cream themselves when they
see DROP DEAD FRED
talking about the way the two towers fell, but I got the feeling that
Rik Mayall was half-arsing this one and just trying to perhaps add a
known name to cast list in order to help a low budget film? I mean,
compare him here to what he was doing in the TV series MAN
DOWN around the same time, where he was outstanding. Either
way, no one is going to listen to me because be it 9/11, Brexit,
Scottish Independence, Black Lives Matter, the US Election, or
whatever's happening in Belarus that I'm not paying attention to,
everyone has already formed their own firm opinions on the matter and
has limitless internet resources/allies to back up that opinion, and
a lot of those people are online just now, arguing with people who
hold opposing views to theirs. Maybe that's the true conspiracy -
those in power want to keep everyone arguing online so they can get
up to the shady stuff in the background.
Not that I'm any better, sitting here night after night watching
thousands of Italian films, but that's only because there's a hidden
illuminati message hidden in one of those Mario Merola films. I'll
find it one day! Sfogliatelle IS people! Oh no the same guys that
offed Marizio Merli are coming for mlwagens lkbnabeinslisrnlge4 8orhb
One
Hundredth of a Second (1981,
Italy, Sport, Director: Duccio Tessari)
Notable
actors: Numb!
Who
asked for a drama about skiing, and not a very exciting one at that?
And why did I rush to watch it, having promised myself I'd do so
after missing it the first time it appeared on Amazon Prime? I know
the answer to the second one (which begs the question why I asked
about it in the first place) - It's because I desperately seek out
Duccio Tessari films in the hope that there's something out there
he's made that's the equal to TONY ARZENTA.
So far, no luck, although there are some other good Tessari films.
This film isn't one of them. Plus, I'm babbling so I don't have to
try and recall the plot, which I'm sure even the screenwriter had
trouble recalling.
Five hot shot skiers are really just four cold shit skiers and one
good one called Gustav. Gustav is quitting the sport (Speed skiing? I
dunno) and the rest of the team need him because they don't do so
good without him. And their coach is threatening to get rid of all of
them if they don't have Gustav. They talk Gustav back into the sport,
but then one of the cockier skiers takes a tumble and breaks his
back, destroying his career and making him one whiney, petulant bitch.
The guy ends up in a wheelchair and at one point proposes to do the
ski run (time trials?) in his wheelchair, which would have made a
much funnier film. Instead, Gustav and the team man up to get the
bestest ski speed time and it takes ONE HOUR AND FORTY-SIX MINUTES to
get to the point. Why use italics when you can just scream in big letters.
Endlessly boring with five guys you just hate and no discernible bad
guy to go against them, this lot just sort of discuss a lot of stuff
and ski, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes in flashback form. I
guess the music was okay though, and that pair of fur boots the girl
was wearing were cool. But come on! Skiing? Why?
I went skiing once to Aviemore and hated it. Maybe that hate
manifested itself subliminally throughout the running time of the
film and that's why I didn't like the film, or maybe it's because
Duccio Tessari totally fluked it with TONY ARZENTA and is
actually one of the dullest directors out there.
Org
(1979, Italy, Genre listed as horror for some reason, Director:
Fernando Birri)
Notable
actors: Terence Hill!
This
one is so weird it makes H2S and ARCANA
look like shopping channel broadcasts. If you isolated the sound it
would be like some sort of lost Nurse With Wound or Hafler Trio
album, but then that would devoid you of the visual assault of what's
going on onscreen. I watched it in Italian on YouTube and people were
commenting that they'd like a subtitled version. Believe me, having
English subtitles is not going to shed any light on what's going on
in this film.
The plot summary on the IMDB says "Explores the complex
relationship between the spirit, body, and mind. The film is a
nightmare with closed eyes because it counts among the most terrible
moments of my life, my second exile, which lasted a very long time.
Inspired by an ancient Hindu legend." Well, that clears that up
then. What I got from it is that it seems to be some sort of
commentary on life, death and politics in the sixties. It was filmed
in the sixties but then it took ten years to complete. There's a
three hour version out there too, but if you think I'm going to watch
that one, you've must be insane.
There are principally three characters here - Terence Hill as
Zohommmm!!!!, some lady as Shuick, some other guy as Grrr???? In the
barrage of stop motion animation, backwards running footage, negative
footage, pop art superimposed on footage, cartoon, images from found
films and documentaries, washed out images, still photographs,
repeating images, glitching images and blank, orange, or black
screen, these three actors frolic naked while dressed in plastic or
dressed as flowers, talk nonsense to each other, have some sort of
fight, act like monkey with monkey masks on, then act like monkeys
without monkey masks on while a fat naked guy plays the trumpet. This
is all intercut with interviews with avant-garde directors, or
sequence with loads of Italian insults flashing on the screen, or, in
the exciting nail-biting ending, nothing happening at all as an old
man sings over a white screen, then an orange screen, just for variety.
When things are really freaky there's some kind of cathartic
pleasure derived from the assault in the senses, but the avant-garde
director bit dragged on. I'm sure it means something to somebody, but
I'm not sure Terence Hill has it on his Linkedn profile, that's for sure!
It's on YouTube if you get bored enough to want to watch it. So is H2S.
Recommended for fans of Terence Hill who suffer from psychotic
episodes or like to take huge amounts of acid.
Our
Lady of Lust a.k.a. Love of a
Nympho (1972, Italy, Drama, Director: Sergio Bergonzelli)
Notable
actors: Magda Konopka! Vassili Karis! Carla Mancini! Marco Guglielmi!
To:
Nona Stronzo
Via
Valpolicella 39
Nomentano
Rome
Dear Nona,
You won't believe what happened to me the other day! I joined the
Mile High Club! Is it right that you just do it in your seat, egged
on by passengers? That's what me and Luca did, anyway. The air
hostesses seemed mildly put out about, but all they did was put a
blanket on us which just kind of fell off again. There was a guy
playing a guitar and then I played a flute badly and then you won't
believe what happened - the airplane started to plunge to the ground!
The pilot was all like 'put your seatbelts on' which nobody did, then
everyone was screaming and flying about the place and when I looked
out the window it seemed like the plane was some really bad kid's toy
being shaken about, but that might just have been panic setting in. I
said there and then that if God save me I would devote my life to him
- which he did!
Long story short - the plane became stable again and we all laughed
and celebrated and Luca looked all sad when I told him I was giving
up the crazy hippy life to become a nun. Mum reacted even worse, but
she's nothing but a wrinkly old whore anyway, ranting on about the
gift that God gave me (she means my fanny) and this and that while
wearing enough golden necklaces around her neck it looks like she's
joined the Ndebele tribe over in Africa. She's a total pain the arse.
Anyway, I'll write again from the convent. It's called The Church of
Saint Rosalba Neri of the Engorged Erogenous Zones. I hope they have
individual toilets because have you ever used the bog after an old
lady's been in there? Blech!
Yours,
Cristiana.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To:
Nona Stronzo
Via
Valpolicella 39
Nomentano
Rome
Dear Nona,
I'm all holy and shit now, but celibacy sucks! I've only made love
to Sister Eleonora three times today, and once with that hot painter
guy who looks a lot like actor Vassili Karis (you know, the guy from SCALPS
and GIALLO IN VENEZIA).
He started giving me the eye the moment I started at the convent,
but Sister Eleonora got in there first, using the old 'cycling-along-with-a-basket-of-apples-before-plunging-into-a-huge-puddle-and-saying-'Oh,
your clothes are all wet, better take them off'-move. So one thing
led to another and we've got it on a few times, and then me and the
painter got it on while I was pulling the ropes in the bell tower
when he showed up with a kind of 'I've got something better for you
to pull' look in his eyes. Luckily, he was smart enough to tie the
bell ropes around his ankles so he could ring the bells while ringing
my bell.
I'd didn't think that anyone noticed, but when I looked out the bell
tower all the nuns were looking in my direction, but I guess there
might have been a rare bird flying by.
Oh, and I've also started masturbating in my sleep and dreaming of
shagging Jesus! Catholicism rocks!
Yours,
Cristiana
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To:
Nona Stronzo
Via
Valpolicella 39
Nomentano
Rome
Dear Nona,
You know who showed up the other day? Luca! He's on the run now due
to some botched jewellery robbery where a policeman was wounded or
killed or something, so I've hidden him up in the bell tower. I was a
bit preoccupied with toilet duties however, and I was wondering where
he was going to poop, and he's all like 'don't sweat it' and I'm like
'what, are you going to go in the corner?' and he's like 'look- it's
not a big deal' and I said 'because you can't just hang your arse out
the side of the bell tower and let loose, because some nun is going
to notice' and he's like 'just leave it' and I said 'because your not
doing it in a box or something and leaving it for me to carry down to
a toilet' and then he went in a huff. Men. Also when he called me at
the convent I was like "AH LUCAAAAA!" at the top of my
voice, then pretended that my mother was sick.
Worst still, and you won't believe this, us novice nuns were
marrying Jesus in a ceremony and it turns out that Sister Eleonora
sneaked up into the tower to give Luca one. Despite me getting my
rocks off with Eleonora, artist guy, and dream Jesus, I had a hissy
fit and have now left the church. All men are bastards. Nuns too, all
nuns are bastards. Jesuses too - all Jesuses are bastards. Is there
more than one Jesus? I wasn't really listening during Jesus class.
I think Luca got arrested, so he's probably having his shit pushed
in right now, so he won't have to worry about where he poops for a while.
Yours
angrily,
Christian
Bale or whatever the fuck my name is.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To:
Nona Stronzo
Via
Valpolicella 39
Nomentano
Rome
Dear Nona,
I've gone back to mum's house. You know how sometimes you kind of
have the soundtrack to your life going on in your own head? For some
reason I imagined, when approaching my mum's house, that a guy with
brain damage should be screeching about how the devil has his claws
in me while loads of geese scream in the background. Not sure why,
but then again it was a crazy night - I ended up auctioning my fanny
off to everyone attending the party, including the painter guy and a
guy who looked a lot like actor Marco Guglielmi -you might know him
from such films as BANDIDOS, HOW
TO KILL A JUDGE and NICK
THE STING. I hope next time I have to reference him I
remember the name, because that took a lot of effort to get that correct.
Then we all had an orgy so we had to air the place out a bit the
next day. Not sure what else I've got planned - maybe I'll become a
hooker or just go crazy and kill myself. The world is my oyster I guess.
You never answer my letters, asshole.
Crisp N Dry
A
Pair of Shoes Size 32 a.k.a. The
Student Connection a.k.a. Someone
Saw A Murder (1973, Spain/Italy, Giallo, Director: Rafael Romero Marchent)
Notable
actors: Ray Milland! Sylvia Koscina!
Written by
Luciano Ercoli of Death
Walks On High Heels and Death
Walks At Midnight fame (and producer of Whatever
Happened To Baby Toto infamy. Fie! Fie on that film! Giallo my arse)
This
film is Rated R - for Ray Milland Really Resembles Relatively
Similar Acting Regular Jimmy Stewart! R!
In
a nice twist on the old 'guess the killer' stick that we get with
the gialli, in this film we get a bit of 'guess the witness' instead,
but first we get to see a man in a neck brace who kind of looks like
Sean Connery get off a flight at the airport, get into a car, and
drive to somewhere nearby the airport, where he removes his neck
brace, wig, moustache, eyebrows and contact lenses before the plane
he was on explodes. Looking kind of smug, he heads to the boarding
school where Ray Milland works and lives.
Ray seems to have been the instigator of such actions, as he pays
the fellow a rather large amount of money for killing someone called
Andolini, but when the hitman reveals that an entire plane full of
people have also died in the process, Ray goes nuts. The hitman tries
to explain that the murder will be almost undetectable and the
explosion blamed on terrorists (which has happened in real life a few
times), but Ray's response is to bash the brains out of the guy using
the most cumbersome ashtray in film history.
Worse still for Ray, the audience has been made aware that some kid
is wandering about in the dark, sneaking into the kitchen to get at a
jar of pickles (and spattering his shoes in the process). The kid
seemingly spots the murder through a very unwisely placed window
above Ray's room which is on the kid's route between kitchen and
dorm, and although Ray catches a glimpse of the kid, he has no idea
who it is, and neither do we. All Ray knows is that the kid lost his
shoes on the way back to the dorm, and the kid is a size thirty-two,
and the shoes smell of pickle.
We then get to find out why Ray wanted someone dead - it was so he
could get into Silvia Koscina's grundies. She was the one who ordered
Ray to arrange the hit, and it turns out her husband was the intended
victim. Kind of awkward that Silvia has a kid at Ray's boarding
school, but it gets funny for us as Ray seems to build his entire
teaching curriculum around the possible witness to his murder.
At first Ray checks to see if any kids are missing shoes, but the
only one that is missing shoes is the kid in the infirmary with the
broken leg, so the witness has stolen his. Ray then starts testing
the kids. He makes every kid sit in a chair having their pulse
monitored while Ray stares intently at them while crushing cigarette
butts into the murder weapon/giant ashtray. He does word association
with them in class about the words 'window' and 'ashtray', and then
tests their memory by showing them a picture of the hitman (whom the
police have identified by now) and asks them to recall details of his features.
Funnier still, when Ray fixes on a kid, the film goes into giallo
mode while he murders them - his first kill is a straightforward
poisoning, but his second involves stalking a kid at a swimming pool,
complete with black gloves. And the look on his face when he realises
that the kid he's just killed is not the witness is pretty funny...
Absurd premise aside, this is a pretty fun, if bloodless film. It's
like an episode of COLUMBO
where Columbo has forgotten to turn up. There are some nice
giallo-style shots scattered about the film too, from Ray's shadow on
the wall above the empty bed of a victim, to him walking backlit
towards a kid. Some good music
too, especially the funky music used during the overlong chase scene
near the end.
Pancho
Villa (1972, UK/Spain/USA,
Western, Director: Eugenio Martino)
Notable
actors: Telly Savalas! Chuck Conners! Clint Walker! Antonio Casas!
"Gmmffsssklpp!"
I exclaimed, while watching some pretentious Japanese animated film (WOLF
CHILDREN, it turns out). "What was that?" my wife
asked, languishing nearby on a futon, dressed in only a coat made
from Madagascan Tenrecs. "That," I said, waving my glass of
brandy in the air, "was the sound of my brain trying to vomit
out of my ear because of this film." I'll never forget her
reply. "That," She imitated, around a mouthful of roasted
dolphin, "is how I feel when you are watching one your crappy
old European films."
My blood froze. Cold sweat broke out on my forehead. My fingers
clenched into my palms, forming bloody crescents. I unsteadily rose
to my feet, staggering to the front door, only pausing once to vomit
into one of my children's wellington boots. I somehow made it to my
car, got in, and blindly drove through the tears until my heart
stopped racing. I parked the car in a disabled space and, hunched and
tortured, called my wife from a phone box somewhere outside the town
of Penrith. I couldn't believe how much they charge for a simple
phone call these days.
"Wh-what did you say?" I muttered into the phone. "How
can you compare an arty Japanese film with Italian (and/or Spanish)
films? How can you, for example, compare that to the Italian
Rambo-rip off BROTHERS
IN WAR, where the two protagonists sing "Jingle
Bells" to cheer each other up while captured by the Vietcong?"
Noting that I had several minutes left and wanting to get my money's
worth, I continued. "PANCHO VILLA is another example.
It's a seventies Spanish film with Telly Savalas playing the titular
General, and yes, since you ask, people do say 'titular' to each
other in conversation. This film spends about five minutes discussing
why Pancho Villa has no hair just so it can have an excuse to have
Telly Savalas in the lead role. It's not striving for any artistic merit!"
I angrily pounded my slave-shop produced meerkat skin gloves on the
telephone box walls, stomping my crocodile skin boots. "And what
about the bit where Chuck Connors has an entire room of US army
officers trying to catch a fly? That was terrible no matter what way
you looked at it. Just thought I'd mention that bit. What I'm trying
to say is these films aren't meant to be taken seriously. This is
supposedly a historic film about a guy who invaded America, and
instead we get Telly Savalas pretending to be in a coma, trying to
sort out his sidekick's marital problems, and some other third
example, too!"
I was in tears now, and would have been lying on the floor of the
phone box had it not been for my ivory walking stick. "I mean,
Telly Savalas sings the jazzy theme tune at the end! How can you
deride these spectacles of wonder I hold dear to my heart? How? For
is it not enough that I deemed you suitable to bear my children? Must
you destroy my true love in life the crappy Euro film?"
"Why are you using a phone box instead of your mobile
phone?" She asked, deaf to my entreaties. My vision greyed as I
stumbled out into the night, a broken man. Nearby a red squirrel
paused in its search for food to regard my twitching form. I felt a
little bit better as I opened the back door of the car and set my two
attack dogs on it.
Passion
Plantation a.k.a. Emmanuelle
Black And White (1976, Italy,
Drama?, Director: Mario Pinzauti)
Notable
actors: Malisa Longo!
I've
never seen MANDINGO (let
alone a normal dingo), or even Mario Pinzauti's rip-off MANDINGA,
but I ended up watching this one anyway as it was dubbed in English
and I was feeling lazy.
PASSION PLANTATION is garbage, of course, and like MANDINGO
(from what I know about it), this is a film set on a cotton
plantation that tries to mix exploitation elements with a serious
message about racism. Plus, now that the world's gone mad, I'd
imagine some folks out there who would be more uncomfortable with
regards to the message about how we are all the same and should be
equal and more comfortable with black folk being subjugated. It's not
like me to get political - better get back to jokes about arses and
balls and stuff. After all, the message of this film is that
everyone's spunk is the same colour.
Malisa Longo is a southern Belle with fur on her words and eyes for
the slaves, but she's also insane, so every time she gets some off of
one of her slaves, she goes nuts and calls for the help to break out
the chains and whip those black guys good. She also doesn't think
that her father is harsh enough on the slaves. After all, he only
makes them work ten hours a day. Nevertheless, she has plans, and
that is to get her lover Lawrence married into the family so she can
take over. Or something.
Lawrence at first is nearly as bad as Malisa, eyeing up the young
lady slaves, acting like a dick, and boffing Malisa every chance he
can get. His father is also a plantation owner and the marriage is
approved, only something happens to Lawrence that changes everything.
He gets bitten by a snake. Not on the balls like I hoped, but on the
leg. When a pretty slave lady saves his from death by using a herbal
remedy, Lawrence is transformed.
Lawrence now believes that slavery should be abolished and falls in
love with the girl that saved him. Trouble is that she belongs to
Malisa and Malisa is as crazy as hell. In a case of 'well, that
escalated quickly', Lawrence and Malisa have a lovers tiff over the
slave, only for Malisa's henchmen beating the crap out of Lawrence
and Lawrence shooting some of the help when they try and rape the
slave girl. Was there even an audience for this kind of crap back
then? There's also a sub-plot about two of Lawrence's henchmen
forcing slaves on each other then having jealous slave lover types
fight it out. Then Lawrence shoots them as well.
Full of very crap simulated sex but not much nudity and sleaze, this
film cannot even achieve the terrible goals it set for itself in the
first place. Malisa Longo has never been much of an actress either,
but you get to see her naked a lot if you are a fan. Lots of naked
slave arses too for those who get off on that stuff, and judging by
the 1.5 million views the film has on YouTube, someone out there
likes gyrating slave butts. Haven't they heard of XHamster? That's
where Fulci's THE DEVIL'S HONEY
is hiding, by the way. Err...someone told me that.
I'm truly scraping the bottom of the barrel here. Maybe I should
just give in and start watching all those Italian spy films. They
must be better than this.
Pig's
World a.k.a. Dirty World (1978,
Italy, Giallo, Director: Sergio Bergonzelli)
Notable
actors: William Berger! Carlo De Mejo! Karin Well! Alida Valli!
Arthur Kennedy!
Although
listed as a crime/drama film, Pig World is pure old school giallo
all the way. There's a huge villa where most of the action takes
place. Every character is shady and may have multiple allegiances.
There's a lot of money at stake. No one can trust anyone and as a
result a lot of people turn up dead.
Those familiar with IN
THE FOLDS OF THE FLESH and BLOOD
DELIRIUM will know that Bergonzelli is an off-kilter
director who likes to pack his film full of plot twists, and this one
is no exception. It starts off in a fairly Eurocrime style, with
three junkies driving a car straight into a shop and robbing the
place before heading back to their pad to shoot up some skag. These
three, who include Manuela (Karin Well - the blonde from BURIAL
GROUND:
THE
NIGHTS OF TERROR - and after watching this I can say she
'aint a natural blonde!) and two smug, gum chewing hippy types, one
ginger, the other seemingly channelling David Hess, decide that petty
robbing isn't for them any more and head for the big guns.
The big gun in their sights is none other than William Berger, here
playing a senator who claims he is out to rid the political system of
corruption, something that doesn't please fellow politician Arthur
Kennedy for reasons that become clear later. In public Berger may be
the clean living fellow, but once he's done with work he picks up
Manuela, who has complicated ties with Berger's family, and the two
junkies to go back to Berger's house for drink, disco, and naked
speeches from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Berger might be having a
good time, but when he tries to give the ginger junky a chewie, he's
photographed in the act by the other guy. That blackmail plan would
have worked out if they didn't accidentally kill him straight after.
Berger's son is Carlo De Mejo and it appears that the apple didn't
fall far from the tree, as he returns home to find his dad dead and
some people escaping. Firing wildly into the dark, he shoots Manuela
in the shoulder while the others escape. It's here we find out that
Manuela used to not only be Carlo's lover, but also his sister's
lover, and Berger may have been murdered, but there's a huge life
insurance policy with a natural cause clause attached to it, so it's
handy that Carlo's sister Nadia is a doctor, eh? Can you believe all
this happens in the first twenty minutes or so of this film?
What follows is a full throttle dive into cover-ups, blackmail (from
all angles), political back-stabbings, sneaky journalism, mind games,
back room bargaining, murder, and even a little bit of Gothic thrown
in for good measure as Carlo, Nadia, and the ever-changing allegiance
of Manuela also have to put up with Berger's shady housekeeper Alida
Valli (who does a good turn here). There's also Kennedy's role in all
this and his hired goons who do his dirty work. It seems that in this
world no one has a clear conscience and it's a case of the most
ruthless being the survivor.
As well as cramming as much plot into the film as possible,
Bergonzelli also throws in almost subliminal split-second editing,
trippy visuals, and even a self-referential film about the events of
the film where he reveals how he gets that prism-like LSD shot. Now
that's attention to detail. This is one film that could really do
with being cleaned up, subtitled, and sold to the public.
There seems to be some sort of message in this one about how people
turn their eyes away from the bad things that happen in the world,
but I was too taken aback by William Berger doing a full frontal.
Better tick that one off my bucket list now.
A
Pink Stain (Or Rose
Spot - I'm not sure) (1970, Italy, Drama, Director: Enzo Muzii)
Notable
actors: Giancarlo Giannini! Delia Boccardo! Valeria Moriconi!
Leopoldo Trieste! Orchidea De Santis!
It's
best to point out straight away that folks who like anything
happening in their films should probably walk away from this one
right now, because this is a film that can indulge itself so much
there's a scene literally made up of still photographs from the river
Ganges, and the film itself ends with a minute long shot of a wall.
Still, I was strangely sucked in by this one, due to the fluid camera
work, the gorgeous music, and Giancarlo Giannini's big sad eyes.
There's not much to say about it mind you. Ambient, laidback music
and shots of clouds start off the film and pretty much give an
indication of what were about to experience. This is a film that is
quiet and subdued, where people have civil conversations and barely
raise their voices.
Giannini's just returned to Rome after spending some time in India
documenting life and death on the River Ganges, and he's having a
hard time adjusting to life back in the eternal city. First he visits
his girlfriend (Delia Boccardo), and although they enjoy a healthy
bout of welcome back sex in a pink velvet room, reality soon creeps
in as Giancarlo is driven nuts the next day by the incessant beeping
of car horns on a busy Roman street (In Rome, beeping your horn means
"Get out of my way", "I need right of way",
"I'm driving down the street", "I'm beeping my horning
because I'm a complete asshole" and "I'm beeping my horn
because that's what Rome needs right now, another fucking car horn at
full volume"). Giancarlo can't believe he's returned to what he
calls 'the trap', and finds out that the people he left behind aren't
so happy either.
Case in point is sister Valeria (Valeria Moriconi, from THE
CAMP FOLLOWERS). Valeria comes across as a free-living party
girl, but Giancarlo finally gets it out of her that she's completely
miserable and lost in life. He later also finds out that she doesn't
visit her father anymore either. Everyone seems to be in a pretty
melancholy moon, except I guess the actress Nadia (Orchidea De
Santis, from the giallo YOUR
SWEET BODY TO KILL). She features in what is the only part
of the film with humour, as she's taking part in a film being made
which seems to involve her taunting and eating ice cream in from of
Leopoldo Trieste while he's handcuffed to a radiator.
Basically, the film is just a series of scenes where Giancarlo goes
to meet someone and they discuss life and death, before Giancarlo
moves on to someone else. It's a very solemn film, and is rather sad
in the end, but as I said, nothing really happens. On the other hand
I've never quite experienced a film with an atmosphere quite like it.
The music and rather unique cinematography (I can't quite put my
finger on it, but it's both fluid and kind of cold at the same time),
combined with Giancarlo's subdued reactions to a world he doesn't
want to be in make for something I was fascinated by.
The very small amount of information and reviews about this film
aren't favourable so take that as a warning.
Poor
Christ (1976, Italy, Fantasy,
Director: Pier Carpi)
Notable
actors: Ida Galli! Curd Jurgens! Franco Ressel! Edmund Purdom! Adolfo
Lastretti! Sonia Vivianni!
"Jesus
must have been an Italian. His mother treated him like he was the
son of God and he thought his mother was a virgin" -
Antonio Carluccio.
Yet
another Italian arthouse film, but I guess one thing it has going
for it is that it is not totally incoherent and has a storyline you
can follow. It still has plenty of other elements that'll annoy the
crap out of you though.
In a strange version of Italy that is both modern, with cars and
shit, and medieval, with the old clothes and that, poor Giorgio is at
a crossroads in life. He doesn't want to work alongside his father
any longer, but wants to be a detective instead. His mother, nun Ida
Galli, disapproves, but never the less he sets off to start his
detective agency, moving into an arcane chamber behind a golden door.
Once there, he immediately gets his first assignment. The mysterious
Curd Jurgens(from the fun giallo/crime movie KILL!
KILL! KILL! KILL!) offers Giorgio one hundred million lire
if he can obtain proof of the existence of Christ within two months.
Giorgio accepts, and sets off on a weird, and extremely talky person journey.
On his way he gathers a crew he calls Brothers of the Night, one of
whom is pyromaniac, and sets out going around all levels of society
trying to find proof of Jesus being a real dude. Walking the streets
he finds his childhood sweetheart is now a prostitute (she was
reluctant to tell him during a last-supper sequence earlier in the
film where Giorgio manages to find more wine for wedding guests), and
she joins the group. He also encounters Edmund Purdom as the devil,
who offers him anything he wants not to find out the truth, and
Franco Ressel as a criminal who mocks him for his mission. There's
also a Pontius Pilate policeman who has it in for Giorgio, and a more
sympathetic cop in the form of Adolfo Lastretti (from unusual crime
film ONE WAY and Damiano
Damiani's excellant CONFESSIONS
OF A POLICE CAPTAIN), who is an actor who's more of a
'that's that guy from that thing' type actor rather than a star. He's
good here though as the cop with the terminally ill child.
However, all that cast cannot cover up the fact that this film is
all talk and although some of the sets are impressive, some give off
the impression that you are watching a theatre show rather than a
film. The surprise twist at the end is about as surprising as taking
your socks off and finding feet attached to the bottom of your legs.
It took four days to get through this one because my mind was
literally wanting to do anything else instead. Like watch nonce sting videos.
Speaking of nonce stings, Pier Carpi's only other film was the
confusing EXORCIST/OMEN
rip-off RING OF DARKNESS
which is a dodgy one considering Lara Wendell being naked and
underage in it. If they'd have made that these days there would have
been a crowd of angry Facebook users heading round to Carpi's door in
mere seconds! He also wrote the film CAGLIOSTRO,
a film that I could not stand more than ten minutes of, and I'll
watch any crap, as demonstrated by this review.
The
Rat Saviour (1976, Yugoslavia,
Horror, Director: Krsto Papic)
Notable
actors: Err...
A
very nifty, Dali-esque credit sequence ushers us in to a film full
of atmosphere and dread, but just slightly falls short of the mark of
being a great film. Still, I'm glad I stumbled upon it.
In a Croatian town young writer Ivan is struggling to make ends
meet, and no one cares, because everyone else is struggling to make
ends meet too. The country is going through a very bad economical
downturn and Ivan has been forced to try and sell his books on the
streets, and it is in this flea market that he meets mysterious girl
Sonja. Sonja shows him kindness by giving him her scarf, but during a
protest on the street the two become separated and Ivan goes to the
park to sleep on a bench, having been evicted earlier that day...
Ivan must have one of those faces, because even though the patrolman
in the park tells him he can't sleep on a bench, he does show him a
huge empty bank that he can use for a few nights, as long as he keeps
his mouth shut about it. Ivan agrees, and accessing the bank via a
sewer grate, he finds an empty office to bed down in. He's too hungry
to wonder why someone has stashed a huge amount of food in one of the
cupboards, and is also delighted to find that the phone still works,
which means he can try and track down Sonja.
It's about this point I started wondering if anything was going to
happen and it was about this point that the director flew from
Croatia to my house, kicked down my front door, rushed into the
living room and hoofed me in the nuts, shouting "YES, something
is going to happen." And he was right! Hearing music, Ivan
creeps through the bank to find what looks like a huge dinner
party/orgy going on in the main entrance, only some of these people
look a bit...odd. About two minutes later, everyone is called to
stand before a shadowy figure who we soon find out intends to take
over the world...someone who thrives in poverty and disease. Der Rattengott!
It's a kind of THEY LIVE
situation involving rats, with Ivan finding himself joining up with a
very small group of people going up against an increasingly large
amount of rat humans who love getting jobs within the civil service.
Paranoia also sets in as it turns out they can imitate people Ivan
knows. Can he find a way out or is he rat nuggets? My kids have two
rats, I wonder what they would have made of this one if they weren't
more intent in climbing up my trousers and punching me in the scrotum
for a laugh.
It looks like there wasn't much of budget for this one but it's good
to watch the increasingly paranoid Ivan trying to get around town
without losing his marbles. The rat/human effects are not that great
though, but the film's atmosphere is dark and broody. The only
problem is that there's maybe too much brooding and not enough
munching, as following the initial discovery of the rat people,
things don't get manic enough. Still, it's short and well worth
sitting down for.
The
Return of Ringo (1965,
Italy/Spain, Western, Director: Duccio Tessari)
Notable
actors: Giuliano Gemma! Nieves Navarro! Fernando Sancho! Antonio
Casas! George Martin! Duccio Tessari! Fernando De Leo! Lorella De Luca!
"A man who is afraid dies every day. A man who is never afraid dies only once."
For
years I've been looking for a Duccio Tessari film that compares with
the inspired inventiveness of TONY ARZENTA.
Some were good, like THE BASTARD
or PUZZLE, but some were hard
going, like ALIVE OR
PREFERABLY DEAD or especially ONE
HUNDRETH OF A SECOND, but none matched the visual style and
emotionally charged atmosphere of the mope-tastic ARZENTA. THE
RETURN OF RINGO more than matches that film, I think it might be
even better.
Based loosely upon Homer's The Odyssey, Giuliano
Gemma plays Montgomery Brown, a Union Officer returning home
after the Civil War. Stopping off at a local tavern for a drink, he
notices that the barman, a good friend of his, is pretending not to
know him, probably due to the mean-looking Mexican duo sitting in the
corner of the bar. A gunfight ensues (not much of one, as Gemma drops
the two bad guys really quickly), and then he finds out what's really
going on in town: gold was discovered, two Mexican brothers have
ridden over the border to claim it, declaring the land and the town
as Mexican land, and his wife is now engaged to one of the brothers.
Gemma doesn't take this news too well and turns to booze instead,
something he is prone to doing throughout the film. With his whole
life stolen from him and an army of murderous Mexican practically
surrounding his wife, he decides to go undercover and try and figure
out how to get his wife back, so he dyes his skin (!) and hair and
goes into town as a drifter, which is quite handy as the brothers
have just bribed a Union soldier into declaring that Montgomery Brown
has died so one of them can marry his wife!
Never mind the plot though, it's how this film is put together is
what makes it magical. THE RETURN OF RINGO is gorgeous to look
at. When you think of Spaghetti Westerns you think of sand, barren
landscapes, sweaty men in torn clothing. Here it's a wonderful world
of pastel colours and bright clothing, the former of which is brought
to screen by the use of flowers, which are every in town thanks to
Gemma's sidekick Morning Glory, who lies in a house full of weird
gadgets and plants. Nieves Navarro is drop dead gorgeous in this film
and struts about in loads of loud, garish costumes. Even Fernando
Sancho, usually chewing on a chicken's leg, lives in a house where
even the crockery is multi-coloured. Add to that the method of
filming people with colourful objects in front of them and primary
colours behind them, and you've got a Spaghetti Western that's
punching well above its weight.
Then there's all the little tricks and techniques Tessari throws in
there, like filming people through objects (just like Enzo
Castellari), or throwing in an unbroken long take at the bad guy's
villa, panning around a dining table as Nievess Navarro sings a
Mariachi song in the background, starting with her and featuring most
of the cast. You get the feeling that Tessari was really into pushing
himself with this one, as the film is full of tiny details that give
the film a sense that its deeper than it might actually be, with
Gemma's facial twitch and Antonio Casas' bizarre method of overcoming
his shakes while drinking whiskey.
The cast do well, too - Nievess Navarro as the fortune reading whore
and part-time lover of Fernando Sancho, Mexican tyrant and brother to
the more serious, knife-throwing George Martin, who is determined to
marry Gemma's wife Lorella De Luca, backed up by sad-eyed, redundant
sheriff Antonio Casas (from the SOUND
OF HORROR). Manuel Muniz (from the KILLER
OF DOLLS), and even Duccio Tessari and screenwriter Fernando
De Leo as hired goons!
Like someone shaving a truffle over what would have been an already
tasty meal, Ennio Morricone's soundtrack
just seals the deal on THE RETURN OF RINGO being one of the
true classic Spaghetti Westerns. Bombastic and emotional, it does
what a Morricone soundtrack does best - marries well with what's
happening on screen and adds extra emotional depth. The scene where
Gemma's wife discovers that her husband isn't dead is one of the more
powerful scenes in the genre, and not a word is said.
I was blown away with this one, but the best endorsement I can give
it is that even though there's not a great deal of action in the
first hour, my ten year old son sat and watched the entire thing.
Ring
(1978, Italy, Eurocrime/Sport, Director: Luigi Petrini)
Notable
actors: Stella Carnacina! Joshua Sinclair!
The
director of WHITE POP JESUS
brings us a film that's half ROCKY,
half drama, as we find ourselves caught up in the tale of a young
guy who solves problems by punching them really hard in the face.
Ciro (played by a guy who looks a bit like Helmut Berger) is a young
guy in what might be Naples, grifting while his father runs a
restaurant with his mother and younger daughter. Things would be
dandy if that damn local mafia weren't sticking their nose into
things and demanding protection money of 50 million lire (although it
might have been a loan they were wanting paid back, and it might have
been 500 million lire - this film had no subtitles and I was
translating it live, in my brain, which doesn't function too well at
the best of times but after three months of lockdown with the wife
and kids is now just running on fumes). These mobsters, led by a fat
gobby old guy, want the money as soon as possible, or else.
Not wanting his father to end up dead, Ciro tries to gain the money
any way possible, but when it turns out he's not a very good criminal
(a robbery ends up with him and his friend receiving spare change,
and trying to sell stolen goods almost ends up with him nearly being
shot). It's too little too late as not only do some mobsters kick
Ciro's dad to death, the shock causes his sister to turn mute! That's
unlucky because that only happens in about 50% of these sorts of
films. Also, the mafia boss who ordered the fatal beating ends up
with a bullet in his head, courtesy of Joshua Sinclair, who plays
some sort of 'regional manager' mobster who does a lot of sitting in
chairs glowering at things.
It's only when Ciro spots the guys who killed his dad that the film
starts heading in a ROCKY direction, and it's lucky for him
that when he starts hitting these guys really hard in the face he's
doing it in front of a boxing manager. This guy takes Ciro under his
wing and offers him a promising career punching people for money.
Ciro agrees, but the manager does tell him: no tobacco, no alcohol,
and no women. That would cause me a problem because Ciro's girlfriend
is pouty Stella Carnacina from WHITE
POP JESUS!
There's not so much of a training montage as a kind of training plus
fledgling boxing career montage as Ciro punches his way through the
amateur leagues (do they have boxing leagues? I only watching
homeless people fighting with themselves in Glasgow city centre,
personally), and when Ciro's career starts to get big, he attracts
the attention of none other than Joshua Sinclair.
Joshua (who in real life worked with Mother Teresa and wrote the
book Shaka Zulu) sends a spy over to Ciro's camp in the form of sexy
sports car driving Nikki Gentile. How much time do you think passes
before Stella gets dumped? About ten seconds, as it happens. Little
does Ciro know that Joshua is setting him up to fight an English
fighter way more professional than Ciro. Can Ciro rise up to the
challenge? Will he choose Stella or Nikki? And why did Ciro's mate
kiss Ciro on the arm?
This semi-bland film does have a few things going for it, including
a funky disco soundtrack and some unintentional laughs. Part of
Ciro's training seemed to involve hitting sand with a huge wooden
mallet and then running down the middle of a street, causing a
traffic jam. Then there was the bit were Ciro bought his mute sister
a terrible talking doll that did handstands, and it seemed she
started crying because of how crap it was, and then there's the bit
where they solve Ciro's love problems over the end credits with a bit
of overdubbed dialogue.
The IMDb says this is two hours long, but the version I watched was
an hour and a half, and that was plenty.
Rome
Vs Rome a.k.a. War
of The Zombies (1964, Italy, Fantasy, Director: Guiseppe Vari)
Notable
actors: Ettore Manni! John 'Drew' Barrymore! Ida Galli! Ivano Stacciolli!
Well
looky here - a good sword and sandals film! This one includes crazy
wizards, mutant animal-men, and zombies who fight battles in
psychedelic colour schemes. It has a plot that moves quickly and is
full of violence. Not too shabby at all.
In Dalmatia (modern day Croatia), a bunch of uppity druid-types have
attacked the local Roman garrison and wiped out the lot of them, but
not before strange creatures take the bodies for some nefarious
practise. Back in Rome, the Senate are enraged against this affront
to the Roman Empire and send Ettore Manni over there to sort stuff
out. Manni's problems are huge - the resident Praetor is a complete
asshole who likes to extort money from the people, and his wife is a
bigger asshole who has designs on Manni and may be in cahoots with
the local mental druid/wizard, who worships a cyclopean entity who
can bring the dead back to life. The dead...like that bunch of dead
Romans from the start of the film!
The druid in question is John Barrymore Drew Barrymore Snr Jnr, and
he's all up for gathering the local warlords together to kick Rome's
ass out of Dalmatia. He worships some god who looks like a Thai
statue of Bhudda, only with a third eye that can make people go on
fire. Barrymore is also lacking in the people skills department
because he thinks he can get his own way by babbling a lot of crap
and having sidekick Ivano Stacciolli kill everyone who disagrees with
him. This strategy does not have long-lasting positive gains.
With Ettore Manni having to fight off the designs of the praetor's
wife, and also having to put the moves on former slave Ida Galli,
it's hard for him to find time to take part in the massive battle
that happens at the end of the film which involves hundreds of undead
Roman soldiers (don't get too excited as they are regular Roman
soldiers with a colour filter added), and the regular Roman army.
This battle, which seems to pre-empt the trippy visual sequences of
late sixties cinema, is quite impressive in scale and just adds to
the general 'competent atmosphere' of the film, which regularly
verges on horror without quite getting there.
Strangely, Sixties Ettore Manni barely resembles Seventies Ettore
Manni. I wonder what happened there. Still, as these films go, this
one actually moves quickly and features plenty of violence and weird
visuals. Guiseppe Vari is a very erratic director. You have films
like this, but then he ended his career with the unbearable cut-up
movie URBAN WARRIORS.
In between, you have the unremarkable giallo/crime film WHO
KILLED THE PROSECUTOR AND WHY? and the better-than-average RETURN
OF THE .38 GANG. Take this knowledge and spread it amongst
the people.
The
Rudeness (1975, Italy, Eurocrime,
Director: Marino Girolami)
Notable
actors: Leonard Mann! Tom Felleghy (hilariously billed as "Pom
Felleng" for some reason)! Nello Pazzafini! Romano Puppo! Carla
Mancini! John Bartha!
It's
safe to say that the main thing you need to know about gangster
Salvatore is that he lets his balls do the thinking for him.
Salvatore (played by "Luis Vito Russo", a.k.a. Gianni
Russo)) has a cushy life carrying out drug smuggling in the good old
US, but when he's distracted by a bit of tail in a bar (and I was
thinking "Wow, he got in there quick"), rival gangster John
Bartha does the old switcheroo on the drugs stashed in the car
Salvatore was driving. He does finally retrieve the drugs after a
shoot out, although how he found out where they were is left a
mystery, but the loss of face in the eyes of his mafia superiors
means that he's shipped off to Palermo for his own protection.
Here, he is given a bodyguard in the form of loyal Leonard Mann, but
Salvatore gets bored after five minutes of hanging around Sicily and
wants to start his own business. He's also got eyes on his protector,
the wheelchair bound Don Mimi's wife. This is where the film got
slightly confusing for me as Don Mimi's wife and another separate
lover are very similar in appearance so I kept getting confused as to
who was who. Basically, Salvatore wants loads of money to start up a
business in Sicily. Don Mimi refuses, and Salvatore plans a heist to
get the cash, as well as wooing Don Mimi's wife into the bargain. And
the other girl too. And probably those two party chicks he ropes in
for his blackmail business.
This is a kind of rags-to-riches story for mafia dudes as Salvatore
pisses off every single person he could possibly piss off in the mob.
He might as well have painted a target on his chest as various hired
goons are sent after him to waste him, including big Romano Puppo,
who dukes it out with Salvatore in Paris. This film does do a bit of
hopping around the place as Salvatore starts off in the US, ends up
in Sicily, then goes to London for some blackmailing while trying to
secure a deal in France with some guys who just want to pop a cap in
his ass.
There's not really much plot here but it's entertaining as hell as
director Marino Girolami (father of Enzo G[irolami] Castalleri,
father of Ennio Girolami, brother of Romolo Guerrieri, grandfather of
Stefania Girolami and uncle of Massimo Vanni) throws in loads, and I
mean loads of naked women and shoot-outs, so there's nothing to
complain about. Acting wise Leonard Mann is the standout as the
faithful and stressed out protector of Salvatore who does what he's
told but grudgingly so, and the last shots of him in the film is
evidence as to how he went on to bigger things.
Strangely, or not so strangely considering the adorable plagiarism
of Italian cinema, the soundtrack sounds like THE
GODFATHER theme tune with just enough changed to avoid a
lawsuit, and there's also a tune that sounds a bit like House of the
Rising Sun for good measure. This film does exactly what it says on
the tin - delivers a load of sex and violence in the standard
Eurocrime way. Nothing to complain about here whatsoever. I bet Tom
Felleghy had no regrets about that scene he did with those two naked
ladies. Playing an Englishman who keeps his bowler hat on during sex
with two babes is something that would be held in the 'great times'
part of the memory banks, although no doubt not shared with the grandkids.
Run,
Psycho, Run a.k.a. Later,
Claire, Later (1968, Italy, Giallo, Director: Brunello Rondi)
Notable
actors: Georges Riviere! Rossella Falk! Marina Malfatti! Janine
Reynaud! Michel Lemoine!
After
watching this film I've subsequently read, on Wikipedia, that
Brunello Rondi didn't really set out to make a giallo at all, and
only wanted to use a murder as the set-up to cast a light on how
horrible and awful the rich and privileged are. He did get that bit
right - the people in this film do come across as a bunch of
self-serving assholes. Could have done with a bit more than that though.
RUN, PSYCHO, RUN is part giallo, part Gothic, and part soap
opera, all exclusively set in and around a huge villa owned by George
Dennison, who lives there with his wife Claire, his young son Robert,
George's sister Eveline, George's mother, George's niece, played by a
young Marina Malfatti, a seemingly live-in doctor called Boyd, a nosy
priest, and a whole load of hired staff who all love to spy on each
other and eavesdrop. That's a lot of characters, and sometimes just
about every one of them appears on screen at the same time.
When we first meet Claire she's watching Robert playing tennis with
coach Michel Lemoine (from Jess Franco's pile of horse vomit SUCCUBUS).
Michel tries to put the moves on her, but she's having none of it,
preferring instead to go back to the house and have an argument with
her sister-in-law Eveline, who is staying at the house and basically
mooching off of her brother George. That evening, everyone gathers
together to listen to young Robert play a Bach piano concerto (and
make bitchy comments about it). Claire, who seems reluctant to mingle
amongst these snide guests, instead spies on them from another room.
Once Robert is finished, she spirits him away upstairs, preferring to
watch him fall asleep rather than talk to George's family. Then
again, she needn't worry about that anymore when someone kills her
and Robert dies falling down a flight of stairs.
One year later and the family, none of whom seem to work and mostly
spend their day lounging around, are talking about George's new
girlfriend, Anna, mainly because Anna is the spitting image of Claire
(another Gothic trait there). Anna also has a young son about
Robert's age by the name of Charlie, who has taken to hanging around
with a crazy lady who lives on the grounds who was formerly Claire's
best friend. Naturally, every single other person in the villa thinks
it's not a hugely sensible idea for George to hang around with
someone who looks exactly like his wife, and they don't hold back
about it either. In one of many scenes involving most of the cast,
Eveline calls Anna a slut and Charlie a bastard, then the mother has
a go at her too, and her George's niece, and then the priest. The
only person supporting George and his plans to marry his wife's
doppelganger is Boyd (George Riviere). It could be, however, that
Boyd is greatly fearful for his friend's mental health, and is
putting his own plans into action...
Oh, and Boyd is sleeping with one of the maids who is sleeping with
the butler too and Malfatti is sleeping with Michel Lemoine and
Janine Reynaud (from Jess Franco's abomination from the devil's anus SUCCUBUS)
just kind of hangs around smoking and making catty comments about
things. Plus it turns out that George and even Anna have their own
agendas too, so it's hard to keep tabs on these things. It does come
as a relief that some Gothic elements starting appearing too, like
someone playing the organ in the middle of the night, and someone
pretending to be Claire playing tennis. This would all be much better
if the film actually headed in a good direction, but it just kind of
fizzles out into a 'is that it?' kind of ending.
I'm guessing that Rondi is making some sort of statement that upper
classes will never accept one of the lower classes into their fold,
maybe, or that the upper classes can basically get away with whatever
they want to and can manipulate the truth into whatever reflects
their own personal vision. Or maybe he just couldn't think of a good
ending, because a decent pay off would have been sweet with all that
build-up. Some nice camerawork and a good soundtrack ease the pain a
bit however, and it's not as bad as his later giallo YOUR
HANDS ON MY BODY, and nowhere near as good as the classic THE
DEMON.
In conclusion, Jess Franco's SUCCUBUS
is fucking terrible.
The
Salamander a.k.a. There Was A
Blonde (1969, Italy, Giallo [at a stretch], Director: Alberto Cavallone)
Notable
actors: Beryl Cunningham! Antonio Casale!
Alberto
Cavallone is another one of those Italian directors whose work isn't
easily pigeonholed. If I can sound like a pretentious critic type for
a sentence before returning to the usual profanity, he has a unique
voice among his peers, just like his contemporary (oooh!) the
egregious (I wish the internet was working so I could check the
definition of that) Elio Petri, the apotheosis of idiosyncratic
Italian directors. Incidentally, in the supermarket today I spotted a
sweet potato that look exactly like a human testicle. It had all
veins up it and was the exact shape and everything.
Cavallone is a bit of a controversial figure, mainly for his film MAN,
WOMAN AND THE BEAST (review shortly, and I'm taking one for
the team with that film), and BLOW JOB.
He also directed some obscure giallo called AFRIKA
which I tried to watch. I can't remember anything about it, but next
to its entry on my 'to watch' list, it says 'this looks shit'.
THE SALAMANDER is set over the course of a day and bit, is
set in Tunis, and involves white photographer Ursula and her black
model Uta. I've got to make that distinction because this film seems
to be about the white colonisation of the world and Uta's inner
turmoil regarding both her relationship with Ursula and her recurring
dream where she sees a black man attacked by three men on a beach
before they cut his balls off and go after Uta, where eventually
Ursula 'saves her'. The two have a strange relationship. The very
Aryan Ursula is jokey and sarcastic, where Uta is introverted and is
one of those people who says 'nothing' when you ask them what is
wrong, but injecting enough nuance into that 'nothing' that it
literally means 'everything'. It doesn't stop them getting it on
though, in one of the many casual sex scenes in this film (which I
remind you just takes place within a day).
Disrupting the brittle harmony is the arrival of psychologist
Antonio Casale, who initially seems to be brought in to sort out
Uta's moods, but instead starts causing a bit of bother between the
two girls. It's also flashback city for the two of them as Uta
flashes back to being hassled and (possibly) raped by another model
(who might be pre-op transgender? Something might have been lost in
translation), and Ursula flashes back to painting certain parts of
Uta's body white and making her dance naked in front of an entirely
black backdrop. Cavallone is a bit heavy handed on the old messages
here, as we get inserted footage of ethnic terrorists being shot
(real footage), civil rights rioting, and in a scene that is
cack-handed to say the least, Ursula and Uta have a dance-off based
on their cultures' music. Ursula dances to typically sixties beat
music whereas Uta dances to some bongos and chanting.
There's also some guy who turns up lying in the middle of the road
who tries to rob Casale, then seduces Uta and slaps her about a bit
(more casual sex), before vanishing from the film, which mainly
focuses on Casale trying to seduce Ursula. He manages in the end, and
hats off to the actress who played Ursula. He's a good actor, as you
can see in THE
CASE IS CLOSED, FORGET IT
and THE SEVENTH GRAVE,
but let's be honest; he's no oil painting. Kissing him must have
been like kissing some sort of weird, clammy Lego brick.
This one has plenty of 'giallo' keywords attached to it on the IMDB,
but that side of things doesn't appear until the end, where after
some murders, Cavallone decides to totally mess up our heads by
throwing in a very strange twist, and then another on top of that.
Most people would bail on this film when it becomes apparent that
most of it is talking, but I didn't mind that so much. There's was
enough weirdness in here to keep me interested.
The
Salamander (1981, UK/Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Peter Zinner)
Notable
actors: Franco Nero! Anthony Quinn! Martin Balsam! Sybil Danning!
Christopher Lee! Cleavon Little! Paul L. Smith! John Steiner! Claudia
Cardinale! Eli Wallach! Renzo Palmer! Anita Strinberg! Marino Mase
(as a corpse)! Jacques Herlin! Tom Felleghey! Nello Pazzafini! I
should have just cut and pasted all that from the IMDb.
Political
hi-jinks in Italy with Franco Nero taking on seemingly everyone to
stop an upcoming coup-de-tat by the Fascists. When a high-ranking
General dies, word on the street is he died of a heart attack, but
the truth is he received a bullet to the temple courtesy of a
mysterious killer known as The Salamander, a killer who is known in
the past to go after Nazis on the run.
I could spend hours detailing the plot here, but let's just say that
the death of the general starts the wheels rolling on a coup-de-tat
led by new general Eli Wallach, who has far-reaching ties with the
fascist underground movement that is stirring into life. It seems
that every witness and every person who can expose the conspiracy
ends up dead, mostly at the hands of giant torturer Paul L Smith, who
is so confident in their success he throws one victim through a
window right in front of Franco.
The film basically details Franco going from place to place trying
to find evidence while constantly nearly getting killed or
double-crossed as the masses of billed stars parade across the
screen. I wish both sinister Christopher Lee and Eli Wallach had more
screen time, but I'm not complaining when we get Martin Balsam as an
Italian Jew recounting how buying cigars resulted in him escaping the
rounding up of all the folk in the Jewish Ghetto during the Second
World War (an act you can watch in the heart-breaking Carlo Lizzani
film GOLD OF ROME). Like
he did in CONFESSIONS
OF A POLICE CAPTAIN, Balsam acts Franco Nero off the screen,
although the two of them interact brilliantly, as they did in the
aforementioned film.
Other folks showing face is the suave Anthony Quinn as a partisan
turned big-shot businessman who may or may not be helpful to Franco,
John Steiner as an army sub-ordinate loyal to Eli Wallach and even
more loyal to Wallach's wife, Claudia Cardinale, who isn't in this
much but is fascinating to watch as a more sinister character than
usual, and Nello Pazzafini as Quinn's bodyguard who gets a lot more
screen time than usual.
That's all by the by, however, because the big event in this film is
when Paul L Smith and Franco Nero go up against each other in battle
which becomes far more homo-erotic than intended and also quite
funny, all because Nero is wearing nothing but a jockstrap and jumps
on Smith's back in slow motion, like a hairy short-arsed sumo
wrestler is trying to bang a giant scientist. Truly bizarre and not
the first time Nero's arse has made an appearance. Some may recall
the inexplicable "naked shaving in front of a kid" scene
from REDNECK. Maybe
he has it written in his contract.
I enjoyed this one but I've got to admit I'd have preferred a more
action-packed finale than the Agatha Christie-like reveal we get. I'm
not sure this one slipped by me all this time, but then again, Franco
Nero is one prolific actor, and there's still loads of his 230+
filmography I have to track down. And I'm tired! Tired!
San
Babila - 8P.M. (1976, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Carlo Lazanni)
Notable
actors: Brigitte Skay!
Ennio
Morricone Soundtrack!
Eh,
too grim. Then again, what was I expecting from a film about
neo-nazi youngsters in Milan? A custard pie fight?
From the rudimentary research I did about this film it seems that
the Piazza San Babila was some sort of hanging around place for
fascist types in the seventies. I'm sure they weren't allowed to
rampage to the extent that these lads do in this film though.
Fours youths - Franco, Fabrizio, Big Malky and DJ Industrial
Pukegrinder are all members of a fascist group whose main rivals in
Milan seem to the communists. Fabrizio is their leader, but he also
seems to be an informer for the police and may also just be doing
what he does for kicks. Franco is the weak link, a mummy's boy and a
virgin, much to the amusement of the others. In fact, one of their
first actions is to try and break his duck, using ditzy model
Brigitte Skay to do so. When he can't crack a fatty, he goes nuts and
assaults her with a truncheon. Symbolism, eh?
I think that the events in this film are supposed to happen in one
day as well, but if that's the case these guys sure get around a lot.
We see one of them fighting with his crazy, abusive father. Another
quits his job when caught with a knife. At various points they argue
their fascist dogma with fellow students and when they finally get
around to doing something constructive they plan an attempt to blow
up a communist party headquarters.
To be honest things meander quite a lot in this film and as the four
are unrelentingly horrible I didn't quite connect to what was
happening in the film. My only sympathies lie with Brigitte Skay, who
is generally abused by Fabrizio and Franco. Even the murder at the
end of the film goes on forever as our four chase a couple around
Milan for what felt like about six hours.
Carlo Lazzani seems to be one of those directors who certainly had
his own vision for things, but sometimes that vision failed him. This
is interesting as it tries to tell a story from a different point of
view, but it still suffers from an overdose of grimness as a lot of
these 'raping, killing rich kids' films seems to have.
Sangraal
The Sword of Fire a.k.a. The
Sword Of The Barbarians (1982, Italy, Fantasy, Director: Michele
Massimo Tarantini)
Notable
actors: Pietro Torrisi! Hal Yamanouchi! Luciano Rossi! Sabrina Siani!
Before
we discover that Sangraal isn't the sharpest guy in the world, even
by Italian CONAN rip-off
standards, we get a four and half minute narrative as to why
Sangraal becomes Sangraal. Problem is, the version I watched online
was extremely muffled and at the same time one of my kids was using
an electric toothbrush so I only caught the gist of it. Some guy
called Nantuk, possibly on the orders of some Goddess, raided a
village and killed all the people in it, including Sangraal's father
Ator. An old lady gets away with baby Sangraal and he grows up to be
strong, imposing Pietro Torrisi (who has rather a lot of uncredited
roles in films such as Fulci's traumatising children's film THE
RETURN OF WHITE FANG and THE BOSS).
What Sangraal has in muscle mass and strength he lacks in basic
cognitive powers and intuition. Somehow he has become leader of his
people, and leads them across the land looking for good fertile soil
and water. They keep wandering as people start croaking left and
right (says the unceasing narrator) and even though one guy finds a
good water source in a land free of danger, good old Stephen
"Sangraal" Hawking over here reckons that's not the land
God wants them to have, and that they should exercise their divine
right on that land over there. You know, the one marked with crosses
with corpses on them, upon which a battle is already happening. And
you know what? Sangraal kicks over them crosses, randomly picks a
side in the fight, and piles in for a good old battle.
Miraculously, Sangraal picks the right side, and these people live
humbly in a village ruled by Luciano
Rossi of all people, giving off a huge Charlton Heston as Moses
vibe. His daughter starts giving Sangraal the eye, but Sangraal is
already married. Still, when Nantuk's people muster themselves to
attack the village again, Sangraal's wife finds time to start giving
the daughter some major attitude. Using his massive brain power,
Sangraal reckons that if he flanks these guys using only four people,
they should get the drop on that massive army approaching the village.
You'd be surprised to know that doesn't go well, and instead Nantuk
crucifies Sangraal above his village and makes him watch as everyone
is slaughtered below, giving us two village massacres in the first
twenty minutes of this film, which isn't bad going really. Naturally,
Nantuk is rather put out to find that Sangraal has been rescued by
wandering guy Hal Yamanouchi (from THE
LAST HUNTER and ZOOLANDER 2
[?]) and Luciano Rossi's daughter, Ati. More annoyed is the Goddess
Nantuk worships who cannot stress enough how important it is that
Sangraal die, and rather soon if you don't mind, there's a good chap.
It's around this time that Hal reckons Sangraal should head up a
hill and talk to some disco guy hiding in some fog to go on a couple
of fetch quests to pad out the film a bit, so basically the rest of
the film features Sangraal, Hal and Ati wandering the land taking on
all sorts of bad guys, like the monkey cavemen, or the frog cavemen
who splatter blood everywhere when they die (don't get excited - this
only happens twice).
This
is all pretty entertaining for those into these kind of films, as
the action is relentless, the toplessness plentiful, and the film
even gory in places, with arms being cut off and guts being exposed.
Even though the film is cheap, the ambition is high, from inventive
camerawork to a bombastic soundtrack that recalls EXCALIBUR,
the shoutiest film ever made.* It
worked for me.
*Sample
dialogue from EXCALIBUR:
"I WILL NOT...SWEAR FAITH TO A SQUIRE!"
"NO ONE WILL WIELD EXCALIBUR BUT MEEEEEEEEEeeee!"
"The King without a sword. THE LAND WITHOUT A KING! AARRGGGGHH!
ARRRRGH!....(in the distance) AAAARGGGGGH!"
Sara's
House (1984 [or 1987?], Poland,
Horror, Director: Zygmunt Lech)
Notable
actors: Errr....
I'm
a sucker for a Gothic horror film, and although at first this one
looks like its not going to do anything special or even gather any
pace, it does manage to mix things up a bit. It's also only a hour
long, which is welcome in my world of constant annoyance and moaning.
Poland, somewhere. A mysterious lady looks out from a coach at a
dashing young gentlemen hunting, but the next time we see this fellow
he's in a bad way indeed. This fellow is Kamil and it's his friend
Wiktor who becomes really concerned that his friend is all over a
sudden frail and very sickly looking. Kamil keeps going on about
someone called Sara that he's in love with, and Wiktor takes him back
to a mansion where this Sara lives. She claims she's looking after
the dying Kamil, but then why is she now making go-go eyes at Wiktor?
Shortly after Kamil goes missing, and Sara is putting the moves on
Wiktor, who suspects something is deeply wrong about the whole
situation. He also keeps hearing weird moaning noises from within the
mansion which Sara tries to explain is 'just cats' (you need to work
on that Sara), and just as if it looks like Wiktor may fall to Sara's
charms just like Kamil, the film takes a bit of swerve into uncharted territory.
Stick with this film, because after a slightly draggy first half the
Gothic horror is ramped way up, with a genuinely clever hero for a
change. You won't forget what Wiktor finds in the attic of the
mansion for starters, plus there's plenty of creepy back up from
Julian, Sara's butler/driver. The lighting actually reminded me of
the Barbara Steele film THE
GHOST, come to think of it. There's not much of a plot, but
you'll be rooting for Wiktor all the same.
This is a nice dark tale of revenge that makes me want to seek out
more Polish horror films.
Satanik
(1968, Italy, Eurocrime/Fantasy, Director: Piero Vivarelli)
Notable
actors: Magda Konopka! Umberto Raho! Carla Mancini (didn't spot her)!
Fulvio Mingozzi (for a micro-second)! Tom Felleghy! Giancarlo Prete!
This
is a hard one to pin down, genre wise, but it's best to look at it
as some sort of permeation on Mario Bava's DANGER:
DIABOLIK film, with the central character being a criminal.
However, where Bava's film was full of strange sets and groovy
gadgets, SATANIK leans more towards Eurocrime and feels like a
Eurospy film, even though the closest it comes to that genre is the
suspiciously James Bond theme-sounding soundtrack.
In fact, SATANIK starts out almost in horror territory, with
scarred (or diseased?) scientist Marnie Bannister (played by Magda
Konopka from A SKY
FULL OF STARS FOR A ROOF and the so-so Giallo REFLECTIONS
IN BLACK) heading to the laboratory to find that her boss
has perfected a serum that reverses age. He's tried it out on an old
dog, and now has a bouncy young puppy instead (albeit an aggressive
one). Speaking of aggressive ones, Marnie isn't too happy that the
professor won't try out the serum on her, so she stabs him to death
and steals the sample, which turns her into a swinging Sixties chick
with the mascara and the lipstick and the wig (if you're having to
ask why a serum provides such aesthetic bonuses to the de-aging
process, then Italian cinema is going to be problematic for you in
the old realism stakes).
Young Marnie, flush with youth and sexy legs, heads off to sniff out
trouble. The security guard at the lab reports seeing her flee the
murder scene, but the two cops involved take some time to put two and
two together, only figuring things out after Marnie has murder
high-flying gangster Umberto Raho (who gets a fair bit of screen time
here). It's also around this time that Marnie realises that the
effects of the serum are temporary, and heads back to the lab to cook
up some more. You'd think she would have done that in the first
place, and she also only cooks up two more batches, so I guess she
was planning to return later to cook up even more...at a place where
she murders someone every time she's there.
The plot kind of stumbles along into the old crime genre where
Marnie plans a heist by stealing the identity of a girl she murders
and heading off to Geneva, but basically the plot is an excuse for
the film to wallow in Sixties excesses - especially fashion. Actress
Magda Konopka goes through a LOT of dress changes in this film, many
of them of the Paisley pattern and mini-skirt variety. As for the
costume she wears on the promotional posters for this one, that only
turns up in one scene, where she does a very slow striptease. The
second one of the film. So that's two very slow stripteases you have
to sit through.
I guess SATANIK was never meant to be digested in any other
form but that of a film to be enjoyed and forgotten about. There's
not much to give it classic status, but then there's not much to get
offended about if you like Italian genre films. This is the first
film I've watched that's directed by Piero Vivarelli. Looking at the
IMDB, the only other film of his that looks interesting is something
called THE SERPENT GOD.
The
Seed Of Man (1969, Italy,
Drama/Sci-fi?, Director: Marco Ferreri)
Notable
actors: Rada Rassimov, for a little while. Annie Girardot, for
slightly longer!
This
is going to be hard to relate to in our day and age, but SEED OF MAN's
plot involves a terrible plague engulfing the world, and a young
couple who have to isolate themselves away from the rest of the human
race until things calm down again. Then they make a bunch of annoying
Tik Tok videos with them singing uplifting songs that makes me want
to fucking throw up.
No, no, they don't do that. I'll start again. Cino and Dora are just
a regular pair of annoying hippy types travelling around while the
news burbles away in the background about a plague. Like most young
folks, they don't really think it's their problem to deal with, and
they just kind of get on with being annoying, and hippy like, but
everything changes when they are forced to confront the disease in
real life. They drive into a tunnel listening to upbeat music, but
when they emerge, all they can hear on the radio is incoherent
shortwave broadcasts, plus the first thing they encounter is a school
bus full of dead children. Shortly afterwards, they are arrested by
the military for buying far too much toilet roll. No, wait.
In a huge dome where a doctor is trying to revive a bloodied woman
lying next to an even bloodier child, they are questioned, given a
pill that will protect them from disease, and then sent out into the
world to find an abandoned building to hide out in. Finding just such
a building on a beach, with the director playing a corpse in a chair
just outside of it. The two kids settle in and listen to the demise
of the earth via radio, where the authorities are trying to rescue
the Pope from a destroyed Vatican. Following this, all contact with
the outside ceases.
Two people stuck in a house together for ages, with no contact with
other human beings sounds like a boring film, but now we've all been
trapped in our house for some time, I was positively jealous by what
Cino and Dora get up to. Cino turns the lower level of the house into
a museum of human artifacts. Dora takes up vegetable growing. A huge
whale washes up on the beach. Some people turn up wearing facemasks
and make the couple sign a contract agreeing to procreate to help
bring back the human race, but then again that's where the trouble
starts too.
As I've been homeschooling two kids since October, I really don't
have the brain capacity to dig out all the metaphors and imagery of
this film, but I did find it extremely enjoyable just to watch (and
it's there on YouTube, without subtitles, but then this is not a
dialogue heavy film). Cino and Dora are a pretty likeable couple,
even if Cino becomes more and more feral as the film goes on
(definitely something to read into that I'd say). Also, for a film
leaning towards the arty, the whole plague set up and aftermath is
done pretty well on a low budget, and believe it or not, there's even
a bit of gore and cannibalism in this one.
The whale was a pretty clever move too - using it decaying to show
the passage of time. The ending was completely random and came out of
nowhere, mind. I guess it probably meant something, but I'm going to
be honest, if I review any more Marco Ferreri films (like TALES
OF ORDINARY MADNESS or THE
LAST WOMAN), I'm probably not going to offer any new insight.
Looking at the IMDb however, people seem to love his films.
No zombie films though?
Shame
on You, Swine! a.k.a. Dirty
Angels (1969, Italy, Giallo, Director: Mauro Severino)
Notable
actors: Roberto Bisacco! Lino Capolicchio!
Your
enjoyment of this one depends on how tolerant you are to endless
discussion and the perennial problem of the bored privileged few and
their dealings with those who aspire to such languished ennui. Man, I
think I may have won an award for the amount of bollocks written in
one sentence!
The events in this film revolve around the death of a man during a
typical late-sixties threesome (a foul olfactory assault, no doubt),
while a rich kid (Roberto Bisacco) knocks one out from the side
lines. Like all sexual interactions that result in the pretty
innocent death of one of the participants, the trio who didn't die
panic and therefore decide the best way forward is to get rid of the
body and continue their lives as normal. This means that Roberto
joins his father's business, pervy Lea renounces her sexual
proclivities to become a teacher (which she doesn't do, but marries
into money instead), and the other guy does something else that I'd
tell you about, but I wasn't paying much attention at that point!
I'll be honest - after the guy dies at the start of the film, not
much happens, except for Robert receiving a blackmail notice that
request that they leave four million lire next to some beehives in
the middle of nowhere. The trio muse on who may be blackmailing them,
and this kind of drags on a bit until they decide that old friend
Carletto may be the one demanding money and doing all those weird
phone calls that people keep answering instead of ignoring.
Carletto, who still lives in the same apartment where the guy died,
is the only one who hasn't moved on in life. He's drifted instead
into the extreme politics of Italy's 'Years of Lead', becoming a
revolutionary artist. The trio being blackmailed therefore lure him
into their world of the rich, mainly exploiting his unrequited love
for Lea. While they play mind games with Carletto, the blackmailer
continues to play mind games with them, but have they really got the
right guy?
Almost chronically talky for the first hour, SHAME ON YOU, SWINE
does develop into something that holds your interest, mainly due to
the mystery of who is blackmailer versus the shock of Carletto being
submerged into a word of middle class excesses. Plus, as the film
goes on it gets progressively more experimental in approach, as if
Carletto's confusion in the world he has previously been denied has
partly unhinged his mind. This, coupled with Ennio
Morricone's playground chant soundtrack, practically saves the
film from being terminally boring.
It's not the greatest film either, but director Mauro Severino
manages to produce something that at least has something going for
it. It's on the Giallo Realm channel on YouTube, but if you want to
watch it you better be quick as that channel gets deleted roughly
every fifteen minutes or so.
The She-Butterfly (1973, Yugoslavia, Horror, Director: Djorde Kadijevic)
It's
appears this TV movie has quite a following in the Countries
Formerly Known As Yugoslavia due to loads of kids watching it when it
broadcast ridiculously early back in the day, just like when us kids
all caught DARK
NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW back when we were kids (I swear
"Bubba didn't do it!" is stuck in my head forever). Some
things make a mark on you, and although THE SHE-BUTTERFLY is
nowhere near as scary as folks make out, it's still worth watching a
rural period horror film to see that particular country's take on
genre. Plus, it's only an hour long and now comes with subtitles
(it's on the Internet Archive site).
I'm not sure what year this film is set, but there's no electricity
and everyone sits around drinking and being bored, so it's either
19th Century Yugoslavia or 21st Century Glasgow. The villagers,
mostly wheat farmers, are at a loss as what to do with their crop as
something keeps biting the necks out of anyone who works in the local
mill. In fact, at the beginning, this is exactly what we get to see,
as current miller Vule dismisses the weird noises he's hearing and
gets his throat ripped out for good measure. For some reason that's
never explained (and a few things in this film aren't), the
vampire-creature that attacks him likes to fondle the flour being
made. Maybe because they're not happy with the quality of it, so
maybe they were some kind of vengeful undead baker or something.
Plot wise we have a young Christopher Eccleston-looking guy who
wants to marry the rich landowner's daughter, who will not allow it
due to the young guy being unemployed and poor (you can see where
that's heading), but most of the film is spent with the villagers,
who get drunk, provide some comedy relief, and try and track down the
undead creature who is stopping them getting some bread, which also
leads to more comedy relief and getting drunk. I may or may not be
wrong in saying that a lot of references here may be specific to the
area this was made in (be it in present day Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia
- who knows?), so I don't know if there is a myth about the undead
and butterflies, or whether or not you use a horse to find a grave,
or whether or not you poke that horse up the arse with a stick to get
it to move.
If you've got a spare hour you can tick this one off your list and
be the envy of your confused colleagues at work as you interrupt
their conversations of travel and family to tell them about the bit
at the end that's a bit weird, then unintentionally funny, and have
them all run off to watch THE SHE-BUTTERFLY, too. Or maybe
just call the police on you. Like the Czech Vampire film FERAT
VAMPIRE, this one doesn't live up to its reputation, but
that doesn't mean it should be skipped.
I was in Yugoslavia back when the country was just about to break
apart. The economy was haywire, so one day a hamburger would cost
38,000 dinars, and the next day it would cost 47,000 dinars.
Strangest of all, however, was one night at the hotel we could see a
massive electrical storm heading from the sea to the beach. When it
reached us everyone ran inside while chairs and tables were blown
about. The thunder was deafening and every time lightening struck it
was so bright it looked like it was the middle of the afternoon. We
sheltered inside in the bar and I looked out to see the hotel's
resident band outside, still playing music while this madness was
going on. Nutters!
Sinbad
of the Seven Seas (1989,
Italy, Fantasy, Director: Enzo G Castellari/Luigi Cozzi [uncredited])
Notable
actors; Lou Ferrigno! John Steiner! Ennio Girolami! Daria Nicolodi!
Hal Yamanouchi! Romano Puppo! Stefania Girolami! Massimo Vanni
(uncredited)! That buffed up lady from Alienator,
still wearing her Alienator costume!
It
makes perfect sense that the third film in Luigi Cozzi's HERCULES trilogy
is called SINBAD
and doesn't feature Hercules. It's still got Lou Ferrigno a
moob-flexing hero. The special effects are exactly like those of the HERCULES films.
And the whole thing is just as hilarious.
However, this one is directed for the most part by Enzo Castellari,
who apparently couldn't be arsed finishing the film which resulted in
it being shelved until Luigo Cozzi appeared, gave it some of that
'Cozzi magic' (which is why we get to see a shot of Disco Space, just
like STARCRASH and
those previous Herc films), and added a PRINCESS
BRIDE-like narrative where Daria Nicolodi tells a very
confused girl the entire story, which was written by Edgar Allen Poe (really?).
Daria's narrative details how the city of Basra was the happiest
place on Earth as the Caliph was a good guy and his daughter was all
set to marry Prince Ali, one of Sinbad's crew (which also includes
Ennio Girolami as a Viking, Hal Yamanouchi as a colourful Chinese
warrior and a same sex couple who serve as comedy relief and on-ship
duties). All is good until the Caliph's advisor Jaffar (John Steiner,
going for gold in the pantomime bad guy stakes) makes the land evil,
hypnotises the caliph and sends Sinbad down into the cellar where
things become rather funny.
Finding himself in a pit of plastic snakes, Herc, I mean Sinbad,
smooth talks these poisonous reptiles into thinking he's their pal
and that he won't hurt them. It looked pretty painful to me when he
tied the lot of them together to make a rope, so maybe the lesson is
that snakes shouldn't trust large-breasted oiled up men. Sinbad then
invades a torture room where all his mates are and punches loads of
bad guys into a piranha tank (including an uncredited Massimo Vanni,
whom he's already punched in the throne room in an earlier melee).
I don't proclaim to have the brains to understand Jaffar's complex
bollocks 'five jewels' plan at all, but somehow he's got these magic
jewels which he sends around the world, causing the film to descend
into video game territory as Hercbad goes off to seek out and
retrieve the jewels in various lands, most of them involving some
sort of "boss battle" with a ridiculous monster.
Never mind the rest of the plot, just be on the look-out for the
various chuckle-tastic happenings assaulting your looking-eyes as the
film thunders on. See Sinbad and his mates get attacked by a bunch of
zombie pirate monsters. See Sinbad punch a zombie pirate monster
right through the chest and pull his heart out. Laugh hysterically as
it turns out the zombie pirate monster's heart has a little zombie
pirate monster face!
Rock monsters, slime monsters, undead knights, nothing is more
funnier in this film than John Steiner's turn as Jaffar. Steiner can
play subtle bad guys - like Beauty Smith in the WHITE
FANG films,
or Rudy from THE
CRIMINALS ATTACK, THE POLICE RESPOND, so I can only guess
that he made the conscious decision to go way over the top for some
reason, maybe just for his own amusement (or maybe because this is
primarily a children's film, which is always something to keep in
mind when watching them). Whatever the reason is, his finger-jabbing, eye-rolling,
screaming performance makes the film much more entertaining than it
would have been.
On the whole, Sinbad is not as non-stop crazy as the two Hercules
films, but it's worthy enough to be part of the "Lou Ferrigno
playing a mythical character in a film involving Luigi Cozzi in some
way" genre.
Slap
the Monster on Page One (1972,
Italy, Drama/Giallo, Director: Marco Bellocchio)
Notable
actors: Gian Maria Volonte! Laura Betti! John Steiner! Jacques Herlin!
Gian
Maria Volonte plays a man who is seemingly devoid of a soul, a man
who will let nothing at all get in his way to produce the results he
wants. Volonte is an editor for a right-wing newspaper in politically
troubled Milan and even manages to use a petrol bomb attack on his
own office as a way to influence the masses to vote the way he wants
them to vote in the upcoming elections. Just think what he could have
done with Facebook/Twiiter/Whatever they use in the time era you're
reading this in!
When a young school girl is raped and murdered, Volonte is
practically rubbing his hands together with glee, as he sees it as
another opportunity to cast a bad light on the left wing. He's even
more pleased when the suspect turns out to be a left-wing radical,
and is determined, through hysterical headlines and speculation, to
make a scapegoat of the suspect, and his associates, regardless of
whether he's actually innocent or not. However, a young, idealistic
journalist at the newspaper might spoil his plans...
It's stating the obvious, but the main attraction here is Volonte's
acting. Nothing, simply nothing, will throw him off his quest to get
the exact headline he wants in that newspaper, and it's even hinted
that he doesn't particularly have any strong right wing feelings and
is just doing it because he can. His meetings with the equally evil
industrialist John Steiner are chilling, as they discuss murder in
terms of voting predictions. Even Volonte's own family are detached
to the point where they barely look at him and merely watch him being
interviewed on television as he rants about how stupid they are. I
did love his speech about the difference between what people say and
what people think. Chillingly true in the time we live in.
Laura Betti also puts in a good turn as a witness who is suckered in
by Volonte, as does Jacques Herlin, who seems to find all the
subterfuge amusing above anything else. In among all this there is a
murder to solve too, giving the film a slight giallo flavour which is
fitting considering the year it was made.
Special
Killers a.k.a. The
Woman of Condotti Street (1974, Italy/Spain/France, Eurocrime,
Director: German Lorente)
Notable
actors: Frederick Stafford! Femi Benussi! Alberto De Mendoza! Michel
Constantin! Patty Shephard! Guiseppe Castellano! Simon Andreu!
It
just drags on forever this one, and I can't quite put my finger on
why that is. SPECIAL KILLERS is one of those hybrid films that
merges the giallo and Eurocrime genres together, forming something
that should be good, but what comes across instead like a soap opera
with a couple of murders thrown in.
The film starts off well enough, with private investigator Frederick
Stafford (of EAGLES OVER LONDON)
despairing at the antics of his alcoholic, neurotic wife Patty
Shephard, who just lies around in bed all day, getting drunk and
doing that derisive cackle that spouses in Euro films seem to reserve
for their other half. Stafford rebuffs her advances, and Shephard,
Spain's version of Barbara Steele (they look like they could be
sisters!), threatens to take on a lover, prompting a seventies slap
in the face from Stafford, who flounces off to hang around with a
young lady who I think is either an ex-girlfriend or a colleague who
fancies him. I'm not sure.
Meanwhile, Shephard (of rare giallo THE
GLASS CEILING and CRYPT
OF THE LIVING DEAD, a film that only I seem to enjoy) has
taken on a lover as threatened. What she didn't expect was for the
guy to just flat out strangle her, which leads to a freeze frame of
her face as the credits play along to some funky music, featuring a
guitar solo! When Stafford arrives home, he doesn't seem to have the
acting chops to act bereaved enough, but he does find a photograph on
the floor of the room that prompts a lame giallo plot, so I guess
that counts as a win. The murder also gets actor Michel Constantin
involved here as the investigating cop, but Constantin the actor
looks like he can't be arsed making an effort here, so don't get too excited.
Stafford's lady friend recognises a girl in the background of the
picture as Femi Benussi, a stripper turned socialite who has opened a
boutique based on her stripper earnings and financial contributions
from her lawyer boyfriend Alberto De Mendoza (no doubt most famous
for being the priest in HORROR EXPRESS,
and probably not from the rubber plant slavery film MANAOS).
Femi fans will delight in the striptease scenes, but plot fans will
despair as somehow Femi knows who the guy in the photograph is, but
won't say who it is, but then embarks on an affair with Stafford
anyway, and gets involved in some mystery man who shoots someone
randomly, which effects her sex life with De Mendoza, which prompts
him to hire Stafford to find out why Femi won't get it on anymore,
which the sends Stafford off on some hunt for some guy who the police
are also looking for, which prompts Femi to accuse an innocent man
who then turns insane, which leads to more arguing and now and again,
some action.
There are punch ups and car chases and gunfights and such like in
this film, all set to a rather funky
soundtrack (my ten-year-old son remarked that it was good, as
the funk is strong in him), but it all kind of doesn't register.
There's plenty of nudity from Femi Benussi so I guess fans of her
will like that, but the whole film is rather flat and rote, which is
probably why it's so obscure. Look out for Guiseppe Castellano (from
the interesting sounding MY
WIFE IS A WITCH) and Simon Andreu as other actors who turn in
the film playing certain characters.
Spectrum
(Beyond The World's End) (1978,
Spain, Sci-Fi, Director: Manuel Esteba)
Notable
actors: Eduardo Fujardo! Daniel 'Jose Martinez Martinez' Martin!
Victor Israel!
Biblical
references abound as Eduardo Fujardo and Daniel Martin (from HIGH
CRIME) play scientific brothers who go underground to live
in a cave for three months and conduct experiments while being
monitored by a team above ground. In the cave, it seems that there's
a bit of sibling rivalry going on as Fujardo is the more successful
of the two, and the more pragmatic, at least on the surface, whereas
Martin is less repressed and seemingly more gentle. The expedition is
well publicised and even televised, watched by a strange woman who
smiles to herself.
Fraternal tension is nothing to what's happening outside the cave,
as while some of the team are in town getting it on with the locals
or boozing, some cataclysm occurs. The first that the boys
underground learn of it is when they can raise anyone on their
walkie-talkies, so they head up to find the landscape looking rather
bizarre, the sun fixed in one point in the sky, and the one member of
the team on site dead, with his eyes turned into crystal.
Trudging across the landscape, the boys find what they think is a
fisherman standing over his boat, but when they touch him, he just
topples over dead, with the same crystallised eyes. It seems that the
Earth has suffered from some catastrophic event involving the
electromagnetic spectrum and the Earth is now somehow moving away
from the sun, which would explain why Spain has gotten much, much
colder than before. A trip to town reveals that no one has escaped
death, as in the bar their friend was drinking in is now full of frozen
corpses with weird eyes. Hats off to Victor
Israel here as the barman, as he's got to stand completely still
in the background for a very long time. That would be genuinely hard
to do.
In what these guys think is a stroke of luck, they find the team's
jeep parked outside of someone's house. Martin elects to go in first
and finds the last team mate lying naked with a lover, both quite
dead. He hears someone coming in and hides in the shadows, only to
see Fujardo come in and stroke the dead girl's breast before catching
himself and leaving. Disturbed, Martin finds the jeeps keys but the
car is dead, as well as all other cars. Things are looking bleak for
these two guys, and tempers are starting to fray too. Luckily, it
turns out that there might be another survivor - the lady who was
watching them at the start of the film...
That's enough plot. This film isn't exactly action-packed, but it
was interesting enough and had a pretty creepy atmosphere. Eduardo
Fujardo, once again, manages to elevate what could have been mediocre
material with a pretty good performance as a man barely holding it
together, and barely holding his baser instincts in check, which is
one of the themes of the film that's explored in the latter half. The
version I watched was only 76 minutes long, and I believe there might
be longer version out there on DVD maybe. This might also be one of
those 'lost' films that was recently found, but I've got beer to
drink so fact checking is not a priority.
For those who watch it and think it's crap, watch it to the end at
least, because I found the ending to be particularly freaky and
downright weird. Maybe I've got no taste though, because I rooted
around some Spanish film sites and the general consensus was that
they didn't like it.
The
Squid/Lo Scugnizzo (1979, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Alfonso Brescia)
Notable
actors: Marco Girodino! Gianni Garko! Rik Battalgia! Lucio Montanaro!
You
know Oliver Twist, right? The kid in this film is, like, MEGA Oliver
Twist. Not only is he an orphan, he can't go to school, his adopted
mother is terminally ill, they haven't had electricity in their house
for three years and have to perform songs in the street for cash,
he's also thrown in jail for robbery and murder, and also ends up
siding with the Gomorrah. "Please can I have some more?"
The kid here doesn't even have 'some' to begin with, let alone the
chance to ask for more. And he's only nine. NINE! The only thing he
didn't do during this film was go blind, and there was a bit in the
toilet in jail where I thought he had.
Gennaro is pretty tough seeing as how his mother is a fallen star
singing for pennies, but when she gets ill, they can't afford to get
her medicine and that's where Gennaro ends up blackmailing
bag-snatchers and ending up with a Fagan-like boss. Sadly, the Artful
Dodger of this venture hates Gennaro, and a failed attempt to frame
Gennaro ends in the bad guy's death, which leads Gennaro in the dodgy
direction of being in jail while his surrogate mother and faithful
dog are outside. He doesn't sing a song about his mother that makes
everyone cry like Mario Merola would, but he does have a crazy dream
about heaven where his surrogate mother is the Virgin Mary!
This insanely bi-polar film swerves from being a comedy (the bit in
the hospital where big fat loudmouth Lucio Montanaro does his
trademark screaming rant before being crushed by a bus) to severe
melodrama as Gennaro's surrogate mother can't get to see him in jail
due to not actually being his mother to an outright Eurocrime film
involving Gennaro helping gangster Rik Battalgia take down some bad
guys. This actually makes the film highly entertaining, because this
all adds to the madness and the film is never boring for a second.
For all those fans of Naples-based tear-jerkers out there, we have
such trademarks as pizza eating, coffee drinking, dinner eating,
extremely loud screaming passing for everyday conversation, cigarette
selling, boat sailing, singing, traffic problems, people arguing with
each other loudly and Gianni Garko as a documentary maker making a
film rightly called 'Chaos'. This is Naples in a nutshell and rather enjoyable.
I'm confused, however, as to who actually put subtitles to this
thing. I've had this film on my list for years due to my obsession
with watching Alfonso Breschia's love letters to Naples, but never
thought someone would actually translate this madness. I think the
only two Alfonso Brescia/Napoli-based films I haven't watched is the
tear-jerker TRADIMENTO
("Betrayal"), where Mario Merola plays an octopus stew
seller, and the one where Mario Merola has to pretend an adopted baby
is his wife's natural child. That sounds like a laugh, eh? It would
have been funnier if he had to pretend an octopus was his natural
child, or something.
Stranger...Make
the Sign of the Cross! (1968,
Italy, Western, Director: Demofilo Fidani)
Notable
actors: Jeff Cameron! Ettore Manni! Fabio Testi and...Joe D'Amato???
Folks
always seem to give Demofilo Fidani a hard time, calling him the Ed
Wood of Spaghetti Westerns, pointing out anachronisms in his films,
driving up to his house and shoving dog shit through his letterbox.
He's definitely not on the same level as Ed Wood, although I do
recall seeing a van driving about in one of his films (can't remember
which one though).
To be honest, I do like it when directors of genre films change
things up a bit, especially when it comes to Westerns and Martial
Arts films (give me a hilarious Godfrey Ho film over any generic kung
fu film), so I quite like that Fidani decided to insert a few
head-scratching moments into this film. Strangest of all being
director Joe D'Amato taking part in a bizarre egg-shooting contest,
but I'm getting ahead of myself here.
The film starts with a whole load of bad guys heading into town to
rob a bank - including Fabio Testi in his second feature. Three of
these guys, led by Carson, go into a bank under the pretence of
depositing money but rob it instead. Carson get angry that one of his
guys just put a cushion over a screaming woman's face and shot her,
but then as they escape town loads of people, including three kids,
get killed, so maybe Carson was mad that the guy ruined a perfectly
good cushion?
Carson's taken a slug to the neck during the shootout and heads off
to hid near White City, where his brother Donavon is in charge and
has his own gang. It is in White City that our mysterious stranger
arrives, carrying a photograph of a young lady. Our stranger, also
known as Frank, heads into the local bar for a beer where most of
Donavon's gang are hanging out, as well as local, crippled drunk
Ettore Manni and local hooker Trudy. There's also a "What the
fuck?" moment when Donavon's son suddenly bursts into the bar
riding a horse and firing a gun. He then starts mocking Ettore, which
leads to a punch up with Frank.
Besides punching people, Frank is doing a little investigation
looking for Carson, which leads to the egg-shooting scene where
D'Amato and another guy are tossing eggs in the air and trying to
shoot them whilst standing in a huge pile of smashed eggs. Frank
fares a little better but I'm not sure if this is what leads to
D'Amato and his mate wanting to kill Frank, but this gives Frank a
chance to use his bizarre water canteen/mirror/gun combo. And this
isn't the last time an everyday object turns out to contain a gun...
It's things like that in a Spaghetti Western - little odd moments,
that makes the film stand out from the pack. We can all agree that
Spaghetti Westerns aren't exactly the most realistic films to begin
with. Even FOR A FEW
DOLLARS MORE has that over-the-top hat shooting sequence.
They might as well be set on the moon, so when people start pulling
out gadgets or weird characters starts appearing, that's the fun zone
for me. This film delivers in that respect, whatever you think of
Fidani as a director (and while I'm at it, I liked his giallo A.A.A.
MASSEUSE, GOOD LOOKING, OFFERS HER SERVICES too!), his films
aren't just generic copies of the Leone films. Or maybe they are, but
they just turn out all wrong anyway.
I might as well get in with the spirit of pointing out the
anachronisms in this film as that's what people will be waiting for,
so here we go:
1)
After the robbery at the start of the film when the robbers are
sitting around the campfire, you can clearly see that one of them is
eating from a Muppets lunch box.
2) I don't know how Fidani left this in the film, but Trudy
has a poster of Jimmy Hendrix prominently displayed in her room.
3) At one point the sheriff uses a dot-matrix printer to
print out a wanted poster.
4) Fabio
Testi takes part in a bar fight wearing an astronaut's outfit. What
were you thinking, Fidani?
5) Frank rides off into the sunset at the end of the film not
on a horse, but driving a Soviet T-34 tank!
Temptation
(1988, Italy, Giallo, Director: Sergio Bergonzelli)
Notable
actors: Antonio Marsina!
At
the time of writing this review, Antonio Marsina is seventy-four
years old, and I bet there are times when a family member is trying
to talk to Antonio and notices that Antonio is just staring off into
space, or perhaps a loving grandchild has asked Antonio a question
and noticed that Antonio is having what they might construe as a
senior moment. It may be even that when trying to choose what kind of
bacon to buy in the shops, Antonio starts acting like someone has
reached into his brain and flipped the switch to 'off'. There's
nothing wrong with Antonio, however. He's simply recalling that
magical time in his life when he starred in the film TEMPTATION,
a film where he got to cavort naked with not one, not two, but three
lovely naked ladies for much of the film. Proper naked ladies with
pubes and everything that he got to touch and stuff, the lucky bastard.
Antonio is basically the turd in a turd sandwich in this film, which
continues with the tried and tested plot of sixties giallo like LIBIDO
and LIZ AND HELEN where
rich, sadly oversexed folk mess with each other's heads for some sort
of monetary gain, only because this is the late Eighties, the giallo
has evolved to involve a lot more sleaze and a lot less blood, and
you won't be surprised to find, just like NOTHING
UNDERNEATH and TOO
BEAUTIFUL TO DIE, this film involves a model agency and a
whole lot of shagging. I don't want to underplay that either - for a
change Sergio Bergonzelli is unusually focussed on what he wants from
this film, and what he wants is female nudity.
Marsina is strutting about like a cockerel with its first hard-on
because he's shagging the owner of a modelling agency, her husband
has just died, and he's suspiciously come into a lot of money through
what may be a forged signature of said deceased husband. He couldn't
be happier, or could he? He's got a sexy lady and money, but what if
he could get his hands on a much younger, sexier lady who seems
allergic to underwear? His prayers are answered in the form of
Katrine (actress Trine Michelson). She's just passed the audition to
be the next cover girl for whatever magazine/modelling thing these
people are working on (it was hard to concentrate what with all the
nudity), and Antonio wastes no time in giving Katrine a special
audition at home while pretending to his girlfriend that he's working
late. Subtlety is not Marsina's strong point, because not only is he
cheating on girlfriend Anna, he hilariously leaves his front door
open, which leads Anna into his living room, where she spots Antonio
and Katrine having sex ABOVE her in Antonio's rooftop swimming pool,
which naturally has a glass bottom so he can be caught cheating. This
isn't the last time this monumentally stupid pool features in the
plot either.
Antonio wants to off Anna and get the business for himself, but he's
not very good at killing and another problem arrives when someone
turns up looking for Katrine - turns out Katrine is a porn actress on
the run from her pushy director, and he's got a ditzy daughter trying
to get into modelling. Looks like by the end of this film everyone
will be wanting to kill everyone else, but I've got to admit director
Bergonzelli still managed to take me by surprise with a nice twist in
the finale. Thanks for making up for that stupid TRUMPET film!
Full, and I mean rammed with female nudity, this film isn't boring
for a minute, and I'm talking right up close on Katrine and Anna's
undercarriage, which probably explains why this film has ten million
views on YouTube. Plus Marsina gets to fondle the lot of them.
Luckily the giallo element is rather good too, with every character
practically being unlikable (except Anna I guess), so you know you
have to watch until the end to see who gets their commupence. The
cinematography is very giallo-like too, with lots of posed
mannequins, and garish colours. A success all round, thankfully,
seeing as how I was suffering through a batch of boring films for a
while there. The lack of bloody violence might put people off though,
but the porn version of those HERCULES
films featured here might lift the spirits a bit.
Strangely, due to all these fashion based gialli of the late
Eighties, I'm lost as to what I've watched and what I've not. I have FASHION
CRIMES and FATAL TEMPTATION
on the list, but is FATAL TEMPTATION not just this film? It's
totally confusing.
Texas,
Adios (1966, Italy/Spain, Western,
Director: Ferdinando Baldi)
Notable
actors; Franco Nero! Alberto Dell'Acqua! Luigi Pistilli!
People - know your Dell'Acquas:
Ottaviano
Dell'Acqua - Scientist (uncredited), After
Death; Stunts - John Wick 2 (?)
Arnaldo
Dell'Acqua - Man Throwing Dynamite (uncredited), Django
The Bastard
Robert
Dell'Acqua - Glass-smashing zombie (uncredited), The
Beyond, Zombie (uncredited), Nightmare
City
Fernanda
Dell'Acqua - Role unknown (uncredited), Battle
of the Amazons
Alberto
Dell'Acqua - Scientist who shoots the voodoo priest
(uncredited), After Death
Now
that's cleared up, let's get down to the business of reviewing TEXAS,
ADIOS. A film where the hero has unlocked the 'infinite ammo perk'.
In Texas, somewhere, a still baby-faced Franco Nero is Burt
Sullivan, sheriff who always brings his man back alive. Luckily for
us about two minutes after we find that out Nero quits being a
sheriff and doesn't seem particularly interested in keeping anyone
alive, as he goes after the man who killed his father - Cisco Delgado
(Jose Suarez from the awesome Spaghetti Western version of the JFK
assassination THE
PRICE OF POWER). Burt witnessed Delgado kill his father all
those years ago, but is having trouble locating the bastard, who is
hiding out somewhere in Mexico. That's all well and good, but the
main problem is that Burt's younger brother Jim wants to tag along.
Jim isn't used to killing bad guys but is a persistent bastard, so
Burt lets him tag along until the get to some town in Mexico, where
Jim's overzealous questioning of the locals results in him being
beaten up and Burt having to shoot up a bar full of bad guys. They
also witness the cruelty of a lawless Mexico, as a Delgado associate
(Livio Lorenzon, the guy who gets a pillow over his head and shot in
the face in THE GOOD,
THE BAD AND THE UGLY. He looks at LEAST in his mid-sixties,
but was only forty-three! He must have had a rough life!) executes a
bunch of locals and laughs it off.
The Sullivan brothers are repeatedly warned off finding Delgado but
are helped by a local barmaid who takes a fancy to Jim and gets
killed in the process, and a lawyer (Luigi Pistilli) who is preparing
to revolt against Delgado. What should really roll out as your basic
revenge film starts getting a bit complicated as the bad guys have a
lot more depth than usual and there's a few secrets to be revealed
that complicate things for a little bit at least before the usual
bloodshed and death.
It's no classic, but the constant grim violence, revelations, and
regret displayed by the antagonist's older selves add a little more
dimension to this one. Delgado is cruel but has hope in an offspring
making a decent life. Lorenzon is revealed to be a broken man working
for the guy who killed his family, who sees no way out of his
situation. Strangely, the only person here with not much to do is
Nero, who is mostly a single-minded hardcase out to get the guy who
killed his father. Alberto Dell'Acqua is the one who gets to emote
more as a young guy faced with a reality that's pretty grim.
This
Freedom To Have...Wet Wings
(1971, Italy, Giallo, Director Alessandro Santini)
Notable
actors: Mark Damon! Rita Calderoni! Femi Benussi!
I
suspect this Renato Polselli written old-school giallo may have been
filmed a few years before its actual release date due to the plot and
the fashions, but who knows really?
It's that tried and test plot of folks, in a huge villa, playing
mind games with each other that results in murder, but I mentioned
Renato Polselli, didn't I? That means that the entire plot of the
film is just something that happens in the mind of wandering hippy
bard Mark Damon, just while he's strolling around Rome with a guitar
slung over his shoulder.
In Mark's brain plot, he's a groovy writer but hasn't been
successful, so he hits on a plan, but not before spouting a lot of
bollocks and soaking a budgie/parakeet's wings underneath the shower
in order to make some symbolic gesture about something, and believe
me, talking bollocks is the order of the day for this film. You see,
Mark meets up with old flame Robin (Femi Benussi, from DEADLY
INHERITANCE), and finds out that her latest lover is a hot
shot publisher, so Mark comes up with a blackmail scheme in order to
get his book published.
He paints flowers all over Robin's body and called her lover Pierre,
telling him that Robin is sick. Pierre arrives with his assistant in
tow (or lawyer, I had to watch this one in Italian so things are bit
hazy) and leans over Robin's naked body only for Mark to start taking
pictures of him. The plot now revealed, Pierre and his assistant kind
of hang around the villa, which is suddenly invaded by a bunch of
those irritating hippy types that permeate all films of this era.
Playing their guitars, having sex in public, no doubt stinking of
body odour and covered in lice. And crabs.
However, there is a diamond in the rough in the form Polselli
favourite Rita Calderoni, and she's giving the glad eye to Femi while
Mark sits in a corner, broody and jealous. The hippies start going on
about peace and love and the assistant starts going on about War and
Peace, until finally the hippies vanish except for Calderoni, so all
sorts of sexual misunderstandings, betrayals, murders and suicides
can start happening...in the last fifteen minutes of the film.
Until then it's all talk with some nudity thrown in. There's also
some slight Polselli madness in the form of a huge metal gate that
can cut off a certain part of the living room, trapping people
inside. The version I watched also made things more difficult with a
badly damaged print with a Nurse
With Wound-like horrible grinding noise for the last ten
minutes, although my general philosophy is that you've got to watch
the film no matter what shape it's in. There's not exactly going to
be a Blu-ray of this coming out any time soon.
Threshold
of The Void (1972, France,
Horror, Director: Jean-François Davy)
Notable
actors: Michel Lemoine, kind of, for a bit! Dominique Erlanger!
This
is one of those films where the plot closely resembles the plots of
other films that by mentioning would spoil the plot of this film by
comparison, so instead of painfully working around that and spending
energy I don't have protecting folk from spoilers, I'm
just going to badly cover up the titles of the films that resemble
this film by rewording the title slightly.
In typical half-arsed fashion.
Dominique Erlanger plays a messed up young artist who has just
broken up with her married lover Michel Lemoine and seeks to lose
herself in her art. Travelling from Strasbourg to Paris in a very
packed train that would give any COVID-era person anxiety, she ends
up in Paris, where she asks a waiter if there's somewhere she could
rent a room for a while. In a remarkable coincidence, an old lady
appears and offers her a room at her house, which has been kept empty
since the death of her sister. It's also very cheap, and the ominous
comment that the old lady makes into the camera makes us suspect that
we may be in for a film similar to CAR FUMES
OF PAUL O'GRADY ON SMACK.
Taking up the offer, Dominique moves into the room and discovers
that there's a strange door that she can't get into. The old landlady
tells her she better not go in there, which means that very soon
Dominique is definitely going there. You see, Dominique likes to
paint shitty pictures of spirals and eyes, but she isn't very
successful at it. She goes to see her brother's colleague who
prescribes medication for her, but also weirdly has a portrait of his
wife on the wall who pretty much is Dominique. Just like Edwidge
Fenech in the film CALL THE BOLLARDS OF THE NARC
(also known as HAIR GUMMING TO PET HUGH),
Dominique may be involved in something supernatural.
This notion is supported by what Dominique faces when she opens that
strange door. Beyond is just nothing but darkness. Impenetrable
darkness. Dominique goes inside, scared at first, but then eventually
she's inspired by the darkness and begins painting in there,
producing what the plot line tells us is much better painting of
spirals and eyeballs, but what looked to me like marginally less
shitty paintings of spirals and eyeballs. Oh, well.
Somehow this makes Dominique more ambitious and she starts selling
her paintings at inflated prices and getting more confident. She also
dresses up initially like the portrait in the doctor's room and then
more like a vision she has in the void, which becomes increasingly
surreal as the film goes on, kind of like the Jean Sorel film ABORT
SHITE OF THE ASS BALLS, but really resembles the plot
from recent horror film WET GOUT.
It takes a while to get to the weird stuff, but as the film is
fairly short I'm going to cut it some slack, as there are plenty of
strange visuals on display, future images in the dark room that
Dominique is compelled to copy, surreal conversations with cartoonish
backdrops, trippy foreboding scenes that cut jarringly into something
else. If you go into this one expecting something like NOSE
HAIRY'S MAYBE or WON'T COOK COW,
you should enjoy.
Titanic:
The Legend Goes On... (2000,
Italy, Animation, Director: Camillo Teti)
Notable
actors: David Brandon! Edmund Purdom! Jacques Stany! WHAT WERE YOU
ALL THINKING?
This
notorious bad film is made with such contempt for the audience that
it truly deserves to be known as one of the worst animated film of
all times. Put it this way: the running time of the film is seventy
minutes, but the film ends at fifty-seven minutes in, leaving a
further thirteen minutes consisting of very slow end credits.
You know the story of the Titanic, right? But what if that story
involved talking animals, the CINDERELLA
story, a bit of 101 DALMATIONS,
a fucking rap song sung by a dog, a disturbing amount of large
animated cleavage, a bit of LADY
AND THE TRAMP, and a Mexican band of mice? Then, if you took
that lot and gave it to an animation team who had just ingested
twenty Valium each, giving them two hours to cobble together some
footage before bursting in on them, taking what they'd managed to
cobble together, burning half of it to make your job harder, and
finishing it all off by using William Burrough's 'cut-up' technique,
you'd end up with something probably better than TITANIC: THE
LEGEND GOES ON.
This endurance test is bad enough, what with all the slapstick,
vomit inducing love story and arsehole animals helping a human girl
get her necklace back and meet Prince Charming, but the film really
gets into trouble once the ship hits the iceberg. I swear I have
never seen a film use Godfrey Ho's 'cut and paste' techinique on
itself! The amount of recycled footage within the film is
astonishing. As the boat sinks we get to see the same footage of the
hull bursting, people panicking, a lifeboat descending, a flare
firing, the lead girl reacting, a kid crying, over and over and over
again, then again, with reverse shots! You've got to marvel at the
sheer audacity of it all, and the clear lack of any kind of care into
what the end product will be.
Due to it's badness (and it's a bad-bad film, not a good-bad film),
this is one of more well known Italian films out there, and it's also
one of the worst. What I can't help but wondering is why I can't get
a hold of Camillo Teti's other films when I actually own this on DVD.
Don't start thinking I paid full fucking price for this though - I
got it in a car boot sale for about ten pence.
For a musical, there was only three songs, too, one of which is the
traumatising rapping dog song "It's Party Time". I showed
this to my kids and one of them cringed so much he actually turned
inside out. So thanks for that, Camillo Teti.
Todo
Modo a.k.a. One Way Or Another (1976,
Italy, Drama/Sci-fi/Giallo, Director: Elio Petri)
Notable
actors: Gian Maria Volonte! Marcello Mastrioanni! Mariangela Maleto!
Franco Citti!
Ennio
Morricone Soundtrack!
What
a film! A mixture of political and religious satire and critique
mixed with a giallo-like murder mystery, dystopia, and who knows what
else, TODO MODO actually deserves to be as long as it is and
should be seen by more people.
As an epidemic ravages Italy (why does that sound familiar?), the
ruling party head away to a religious retreat for spiritual
cleansing. This clinical place, full of white sculptures depicting
various scenes from the bible, is run by Don Gaetano (Marcello
Mastrioanni, and if he's acted better anywhere outside this film,
I've not seen it), a self-confessed 'bad priest' who by definition
also ensures the longevity and strength of the Church. Don Gaetano is
superficially a pious, hot-blooded religious man determined to help
the politicians cleanse their souls, but he also seems to give drugs
to various guests, plot with others, and have a special bond with
Gian Maria Volonte, whom the others refer to as 'The President'.
Since watching this film I've discovered he's playing a parody of the
then President Moro, whom he would later actually play in the film THE
MORO AFFAIR.
Volonte also has his wife secreted away in his room, and they have a
very complicated relationship where his wife (Mariangela Maleto) is
more like his mother. Volonte is also a man of two sides - his
outward persona is that of a scared, anxious man looking for
absolution, whereas inwardly he seeks to destroy his enemies and
seize power. There's many a shady dealing going on between Volonte
and his inner circles, Gaetano and Volonte's superior, and a maverick
called Voltrano who seems to have a whole lot of damning evidence
against everyone.
Oh, and most of the film takes place in a complicated science
fiction-like underground bunker full of mass surveillance and the
film takes a right turn into outright weirdness when it develops that
there's a murderer among the politicians. When the bodies start
piling up (and they really do start piling up), it becomes clear that
someone has an ulterior motive. But what does it all mean?
Don't ask me. However, the endlessly inventive camera work, clinical
set design, arty visual composition, and especially acting, won me
over right from the start with this film. Elio Petri always made
something interesting, and this one is outstanding. Volonte and
Mastrioanni seem to be trying to outdo each other here, with
Volonte's bipolar pious/scheming character and Mastrioanni's
effortless conveying of Don Gaetano's razor sharp mind just bursting
out of the screen every time they start glaring at each other.
Like A QUIET
PLACE IN THE COUNTRY, Ennio
Morricone's soundtrack is a mix of industrial groans and
atonality. This was yet another film that proves Elio Petri to be one
of the most original of Italian directors, as both this and QUIET
PLACE are masterpieces.
The
Topless War (1964, Italy, Comedy,
Director: Enzo Di Gianni)
Notable
actors: Err...John Stevenson Lang seems to be one of the rare breed
of Glaswegians who somehow find themselves involved in Italian
cinema, like Charles Borromel or Ian McCulloch.
I
was suckered in by this one because the concept is so monumentally
stupid and sexist. Satan needs more lost souls for hell and has the
great idea of having two of his minions go to Italy to convince women
to go about topless, therefore corrupting them and sending them on
the path to Hell, where Satan can watch them do a little striptease
before consigning them to an afterlife of never-ending torment. He
does this because he wants to be rewarded some golden horns as his
medal collection is well out of date (he has medals for causing
nuclear explosions and the Fall of Troy, but who's giving him these
rewards isn't clear).
Satan's vision is for all the ladies in the world to go topless,
because what he likes to do is sit on his throne with all his devil
minions and watch women cavorting in front of him while some other
devil guy bangs a tambourine and laughs incessantly. Then Satan
laughs incessantly. Then all his minions do the same which had me
thinking that I had suddenly found myself in some sort of personal
Hell where everyone is laughing and a film that clearly advertises
that there's going to be topless ladies in it doesn't even feature a
single nipple. There's even a song about going topless, for fuck's sake.
Up on Earth, our two minions (one of whom was giving me serious Jim
Carrey in DUMB AND DUMBER
vibes) go on a tour of Italy, calling in their location to hell and
giving a brief description of their whereabouts, be it Sicily,
Venice, Ischia or wherever. Mostly what happens is they convince a
woman to wear their special topless top, only for things to go wrong
and some Three Stooges slapstick to occur, only not funny, like when
the Three Stooges did it.
Featuring at least six or seven striptease numbers in hell while
Satan and his minions drink fire from skulls, THE TOPLESS WAR
gives the impression that women are a bunch of easily manipulated
morons whose only goal in life is to look good for their husbands or
the general public, who easily fall into love triangles or just plain
debase themselves for masculine pleasure. Most of the girls here
appear topless, only with something covering up their nipples. and
none of them have any character at all - they are simply there to
strip off for the camera, giggle, and be protected by male counterparts.
Strangely, the set design for the film is amazing. I can't help but
feel that some set from a peplum film was nicked for this, as Satan's
lair is huge and expertly designed. Then again, who knows when it
comes to Italian cinema. This is cinema trash at it's trashiest, and
surely was cringe-inducing even back then.
That's the review Fred. Remember and delete this last paragraph. Do
you think that pro-women stuff in the review will get me in there
with the birds? I was thinking about this while wolf-whistling some
chicks as I was working on a building site this morning. I think my
secretary might be into me too - she certainly doesn't complain when
I give her a friendly slap on the arse every morning. You know how
these bints think. Treat them mean, keep them keen. Well, I'm off for
a game of golf with the lads - at least they keep the fanny away from
that course. (You're on your own on this one, Steven. I hope
your wife doesn't read this! - Fred)
Tortilla
Road (1991, Italy, Crime,
Director: Fabrizio De Angelis)
Notable
actors: Antonio Sabato Jnr! Old Lou Castel! Strangely not aged too
badly Franco Diogene! David Warbeck!
Hilariously
bad action film from Fabrizio De Angelis. Some people may be
offended by the film's blandness and lack of excitement, but the
awful acting, predictable plot, bad continuity and zero effort
dubbing pushes everything into the unintentionally funny territory.
Just check out the dubbing of the singer in the country band in the
bar - it's brilliant! Somehow the usual dubbing guy who isn't Nick
Alexander has taken it upon himself to sing country and western songs
in the background of one scene in such a half-arsed fashion I'm not
sure I even picked up a single bit of the dialogue I was supposed to
be listening to!
Now, no one could ever claim that Antonio Sabato Snr was that great
an actor, but have you seen Junior Sabato in action? If you have, it
probably means you accidentally switched your television channel to
Sy-Fy by accident, because mostly he appears in the terrible CGI
monsters movies on there, and no one in their right mind, including
his dad I imagine, would actively seek out his work. Here, he plays
some young jerk who rescues a nun called Aurora from dirty rich
businessman Lou Castel, goes off for a while, then comes back to town
to help some old drunk mine for gold. Aurora is now a floozy, Castel
wants revenge, and Sabato finds himself accused of murder.
The budget here looks like it was collected the day before filming
in a charity can collection at a mildly busy train station, and I'd
imagine the actors weren't paid much, which would explain both Castel
and Warbeck's phoned in acting. It's hard to tell what Sabato's
trying to convey as his acting spectrum runs from 'constipated
scowling' to 'granite statue' to 'painting of a man with no
expression'. I was totally confused as he got all uppity that Aurora,
who he'd met only once, was a bit of a goer, but then the next minute
he was into her. I did find it funny when they shared a bottle of
whiskey together, then went off to fly in a plane, and threw the
empty bottle of whisky out of the plane in mid-flight. Ah, care free
young love.
Even the action sequences are flat and filmed as if director
Fabrizio De Angelis was shouting instructions from a toilet while he
was having a shit. Yet still, the general crapness of it all worked
for me. I think I have some sort of bug mind you, so for all I know I
just dreamt this entire film in a fever. Best bit was when floozy
girl tells Sabato Junior she's going to hitch out of town, and then a
car immediately pulls up behind her and offers her a lift.
Fabrizio De Angelis must have thought this one was crap, because
there's not dozens of sequels to it like those high-octane KARATE
WARRIOR films,
insurance company nightmare THUNDER
WARRIOR films, and Unemployed Listless Man Watching TV and
Scratching His Balls Warrior films.
Transplant
of A Brain a.k.a. Crystalbrain
(1970, Spain/Italy/UK, Crime/Thriller?, Director: Juan Logar)
Notable
actors: Eduardo Fujardo! Simon Andreu! Silvia Dioniso! Malisa Longo!
Frank Wolff! Nuria Torray!
Oh
no! Those headaches court judge Eduardo Fujardo has been suffering
from turned out to be a brain tumour, and Doctor Frank Wolff says he
hasn't got long to live, unless they remove the tumour and transplant
a bit of some other guy's brain in there. Fujardo figures that an
untested, possibly pioneering medical procedure would be preferable
to death, not knowing that for the rest of the film he's going to
wandering around looking really confused about things.
All they need is a donor, so it's lucky for them a young Italian
immigrant Simon Andreu (from DEATH
WALKS ON
HIGH HEELS, DEATH
WALKS AT MIDNIGHT and Death Walks This Way, Talks This Way
[featuring Aerosmith]), has just been run over by a van, his lasts
word being "Mariella". Simon's brother isn't too happy
about what happened, although hot chick Malisa Longo is pretty
nonchalant about it. The reasons aren't quite clear yet, but they
will be, as following the operation, Eduardo has woken up and spoken
his first word: "Mariella".
Yes, it's one of those deals. Eduardo seems to totally recalling the
life of Simon, which leads to many flashbacks as we find out what
exactly happened to Simon. Eduardo's wife (Nuria Torray) is
understandably upset, but the increasingly sinister Wolff assures her
that there's just a bit of the old tussling going on in Eduardo's
skull, what with the bit of new brain in there and such like, and
he'll be fine soon enough once he stops wandering around saying
Mariella and shit. Then he orders folk to keep a close eye on Eduardo.
Due to the memory thing, quite a lot of this film plays out more
like a crime film (or even, one of Mario Merola's crime/drama deals -
the flashbacks are even filmed at Cerata, same place Mario made his
first film). Back when Simon's brain was still in his head, we find
that he was just a humble lad in a seaside town, madly in love with
Silvia Dioniso. He wants to marry Dioniso but he also wants to earn a
fortune first to give her the good things in life, so for now he's
following in his brother's footsteps and heading off to England for a
while, not knowing his brother has fallen in with a gang of English
gangsters who want pull a heist.
Simon is a good guy though, and decides to head back home. However,
cheeky Malisa Longo puts the moves on him and before you know it
Simon is back in the gang, but what went wrong and why he died I'll
leave up to you to find out (unless you've got literally anything
better to do). When Eduardo has a flashback he usually retraces his
steps, so you get to see him wandering around London being confused,
saying "Mariella is waiting on me" and sweating. One place
he goes is Piccadilly Circus. You know, the site of the flashy
advertising boards that appears in every film set in London? I made
it down to London a few years back and went there, all excited to see
something I've seen in so many films, only to find out they'd
replaced it with a huge digital screen...that wasn't even working. Bastards.
This film contains no nudity or gore and very little violence
indeed. One character dies of heart attack, and there's only three
deaths in the film. Eduardo doesn't turn into a raving killer to get
revenge on the gang (that would have been a good idea to put in
there), and just...looks confused and scared. Luckily for us Eduardo
Fujardo pulls off the role, so we do kind of feel sorry for the guy I
guess, but it's a strange choice to dilute the tired brain transplant
story and have a film in which nothing much really happens. Oh well.
Nuria Torray sure is pretty though, and I guess there's plenty of
Spaghetti Western faces to spot throughout the film.
The
Trumpet: Four Thieves Chasing Millions
a.k.a. The Smile of Pythias (1979, Eurocrime, Italy/Greece, Director:
Sergio Bergonzelli)
Notable
actors: Karin Well! Jessica Dublin! The farting shepherd guy from Island
of Death!
It's
like director Sergio Bergonzelli simply can't tell a story straight.
Here, he takes the usual heist plot and mixes it with elements of
comedy, sleazy sex, a slight supernatural bent, strange characters
and mixes it with vivid dreams, flashbacks that weren't required in
the first place, and an ending that goes on five minutes longer than
it should have. I hope that doesn't tempt anyone because this film
was a bit of a slog.
Some greedy millionaire likes collecting ancient works of art
illegally, and now requires a bronze statue held in a museum in
Delphi, Greece. To do this he sends his minion to get together a gang
to carry out the heist, including our hero, Lakis Komninos,
blackmailed into the heist due to his being on the run from the law.
Next our minion, who is one of THREE characters in this film who
giggle incessantly, recruits a rich playboy in order to use his yacht
to transport the statue away. We also have the drug addicted,
alcoholic Colonel, from whose house they will be tunnelling under the
museum. I've lost interest describing characters so let's just say
there's three other guys, one with a ridiculously high voice, and
another played by the guy who bummed that serial killer at the end of ISLAND
OF DEATH.
The plan is to tunnel down into an ancient aqueduct, then into the
museum's cellar, where they will cut through the floor and lower the
statue into the cellar. Obstacles are numerous - they have to cover
up the noise of the drilling, the statue is protected by an acoustic
alarm and Lakis unfortunately notices that the assistant architect at
Delphi is his ex-girlfriend. Also, everybody hates everyone, probably
because of all the cackling and giggling. I mean, why have a
character in your film that cackles like a witch when you can have
another guy who laughs like a chimpanzee?
That's the basic plot, but Bergonzelli sees fit to tack on a
sub-plot with Karin Well hired by the minion to put the moves on
Lakis in order to spy on him, which leads to a fairly lengthy love
scene (you see lots of Well, if you're interested). This also leads
to Well falling instantly in love with Lakis, having a dream where
everyone double-crosses and murders each other (which would have been
a better ending), getting caught being a spy by Lakis, working her
way back into bed with him again, which leads to yet another love
scene, almost the exact same as the first one, only this time set to
music stolen from THE
CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS! This sub-plot also leads to some
serious questions that are never answered later on, and ends in a
truly head-scratching manner.
Then there's the archeological dig that suddenly unearths an ancient
tablet which reads like a prophecy regarding the robbery which hints
that something supernatural might arise from the plot, but then never
does. It's like Bergonzelli made things up as he went along and kept
his options open regarding whether he should make a comedy or a
violent crime film. The ending certainly smacks of comedy, but a lot
of the film involves the cast in a cellar, arguing about stuff and
isn't funny at all.
I guess another reason for all the random crap is that the heist
plot didn't stretch to a full movie so he just stuck some random
things into the script to pad it out. Whatever's going on here, I
suggest you give it a miss. It's had over one hundred thousand views
on YouTube so guess there's either a following for the film out there
or there was just one guy who really liked that bit where you saw
Karin Well's arse and fanny.
Tunka
The Warrior (1984, Spain,
Fantasy, Director: Joaquin Gomez)
Notable
actors: Nope.
We
are told at the start of TUNKA THE WARRIOR that the world was
destroyed by nuclear war and the remnants of humanity live on a
mysterious island, but as the film played out I got the distinct
impression that nothing bad happened to humanity at all and someone
out there used nuclear war as an excuse to dump a whole load of
remarkably stupid people on an island and leave them to it. The
characters in this film are as thick as fuck.
It took me a while to get my head around things, but as far as I can
tell, there are three different tribes living on the island. The
all-female Selenians (Damn them! Damned Selenians), who oppress the
all-male Salenk tribe who can't escape from a valley because some law
written down somewhere says they can't (Damn them! Damn Salenks, and
their village, which is called Six for no reason). The other tribe is
another all-male tribe called the Tazaris, and they have designs on
the Selenians, because they are a bunch of stupid women. The Tazaris
attack the Selenians and steal some women, and the Selenians fight
back with hand-bags and guilt trips, to no avail. Damn Tazaris, who
bicker endlessly.
Now, nearly everyone on this island obeys randomly made-up laws that
make no sense, and one of these stupid laws is that Selenians cannot
enter Tazari land because if they do they will be cursed, so instead
they send their chosen Salenk champion to go instead. That's right -
they send one guy to go and take on an entire tribe. Surprisingly,
this doesn't work, as the guy gets his face mangled by an eagle and
murdered in about ten seconds. The defeated Selenians then take his
corpse and throw it in the sea. At least they try to, but if you
watch the film you'll see that the dummy they throw barely clears
three feet before just stopping at the top of the cliff.
Despite him being thrown in the sea, his fellow tribesman retrieve
his body. This is where Tunka comes in. Looking like he should be
playing rhythm guitar for Status Quo, Tunka is the brother of the guy
who just died, and he's out to avenge his death, thinking the
Selenians killed him in one of their ceremonies. Damn ceremonies.
Making my damn brain hurt. Damn!
Tunka somehow manages to navigate his way from Six to the Selenian's
camp, which everyone is surprised at because...you know...it is
written that he couldn't do that. This is about the same time my head
began to hurt trying to understand the logic behind the laws of this
crazy island. It seems that the Selenians like to put the Salenks
through trials where most of them die because to die at a woman's
blade makes them not worthy to be warriors to fight on behalf the
women, but if the women where originally superior to the men in
combat, why do they need to train a guy to fight on their behalf. And
why do the Tazari spend most of their time berating each other for
being 'as weak as five old women'? The fact I can write so much about
this shows you how much of the film involves the brain-damaged
politics of this island, which is like what would happen if the cast
of LOST all
simultaneously suffered head injuries.
It also means that in the action department things are lacking and
Tunka himself doesn't actually do much, except go the the enemy camp
to find the imprisoned women, get caught, kill two guards, and then
get caught again! The only character that displays any intelligence
is his dwarf sidekick. The bad guys have a dwarf sidekick too, but he
mostly gets slapped about for no good reason.
Apart from the three tribes, there's also this guy who wanders
around the place screaming about prophecies and what-not, but to me
he was just like those guys you used to find in Glasgow city centre
standing under a bridge having a fight with someone who wasn't there.
Due to Coronavirus, I'm only about half a step away from that state
myself. Damn those invisible bastards! Probably ghost Jess Franco,
trying to donk up my life with Lina Romay's ghost pubes! They have
pubes in heaven, right?
Tunka the Moron is a stupid film filled with stupid incidents and
the highest use of the word Damn I've ever witnessed in a film, but
as a bad movie it's definitely worth a watch due to the bad dialogue,
terrible fight sequences, and fascination with people following
ancient laws. I thought I'd watched all the CONAN rip-offs,
then this turns up. What other crap is waiting out there?
Two
Magnum .38s For A City Full of Corpses
(1975, Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Mario Pinzauti)
Notable
actors: Luigi Pistilli! Gordon Mitchell! Guido Leontini!
Dino
Strano seems to be an odd choice for a hero in a Eurocrime film.
With hair like late Irish Eurovision Song Contest presenter and
all-rounder Terry Wogan matched with a horrendous, ill-fitting suit
and a huge kipper tie, he's about as far removed from Maurizio Merli
as you can get. In fact, he reminds me of this guy we used to see
outside the gates at school who would always be having an argument
with himself. More surreal still is the matching of this guy with a
bad guy played by Italian Guido Leontini, who also resembles a
long-term unemployed man who owns one set of clothes and spends his
time between a bar, a bookkeepers, and the local job centre. You know
the type - they smell of overused vegetable oil and cheap tobacco and
always tell stories that go "So I fuckin' says to him...".
This film comes from the outer reaches of Italian cinema and it's
very hard to find information on it, so let's go ahead with the plot
and get it over and done with. Dino Strano plays a struggling writer
who cannot afford to keep his lover and secretary Silvia, so she ends
up turning to prostitution. Strano also has a shady past where he was
a button man for the mafia in Sicily, but a kindly Don set him up on
the road to fame with the writing, which led to nothing. Now, Strano
wants Silvia to give up being a hooker and return to him, but he has
her pimp Piero to contend with.
Piero I guess is just thinking of his finances, but this prompts a
war between Piero and Strano which starts off innocently enough with
a punch up and Silvia being smacked around, but the next thing you
know Strano is turning up at Piero's club to beat him up and Piero is
putting a couple of slugs in Strano's leg. This sparks off the
interest of policeman Luigi Pistilli (I'm guessing so, because the
otherwise good Pistilli looks bored out of his mind here), and when
Piero is killed in a hit and run, Pistilli thinks Strano has
something to do with. Then again, he was in hospital, so who did do it?
It's about then Guido Leontini, another gangster connected to the
same gang as Piero, contacts Strano. Now I've got to admit that
something got lost in translation at this point for me, but Strano
ends up owing the mob a lot of cash (either compensation for Piero or
paying to keep Sylvia off the streets). Strano, while pretending to
make the money required while also setting up a double cross, also
falls in with a young artist lady whom he puts the moves on. I
thought this melted Johnny Cash-looking mofo was loyal to Silvia, but
there you go. It was the seventies after all.
I guess I should mention that Gordon Mitchell is supposed to be the
head of the crime syndicate, but he's in the film even less than
Luigi Pistilli. In fact, there is no other actor better than 'doing a
Kinski' than Gordon Mitchell (excepting Kinski himself). "Doing
a Kinski" involves appearing in the film as little as possible
while taking top billing and the wages that go with it. Check out the
film GANGSTERS' LAW.
It's a very RESERVOIR DOGS-like
film where Kinski barely interacts with the cast at all. There are a
few Westerns like that too with him reacting to shots off-screen like
Godfrey Ho is behind the camera. John Ireland was bad for this too,
and much later in the lifetime of Italian cinema, Maurice Poli and
Paul Muller.
What happens in this film is that Strano takes things too far and
gets a severe beating for his troubles which results in him having a
ruptured liver (and being pissed on). Now he's got a limited amount
of time to sort everything out before he dies, so it's a pity that
besides the odd brief bit of violence, this film waits one hour and
fourteen mintues in before including any proper kind of action.
Before that it's just talk, talk, talk, and there's only so much
mileage you can get out of a crappy looking nightclub where people
dance like it's still the sixties.
Like 99% of Eurocrime films, it's still not painfully terrible. I
don't know how they manage it.
An
Uncertain Death (1973,
Spain/Italy/India, Horror, Director: José Ramón Larraz)
Notable
actors: Antonio Molino Rojo! Rosalba Neri!
This
one takes forever to get going, which is a shame, because the last
fifteen minutes or so are not bad. From the director of the giallo DEVIATION
comes a film that exists in a more grey area - is it a horror,
psychological drama, or a giallo? I'm not even sure the director knew.
In India, plantation owner Dawson has just not-so-subtly broken up
with Indian lover Rosalba Neri, who isn't taking it very well. While
pacing around the room wearing her very loud necklace (plot point!)
she states that she curses the Dawson house and curses the Dawson
family, even though it's rumoured that the family is already cursed,
what with the previous Dawson going insane because he thought vines
were creeping in his window to strangle him and ending being chained
up in the basement. We've all been there.
After a very Jess Franco-like title sequence, we find ourselves
slightly in the future, with Dawson returning to the plantation with
a new bride - Barbara. Barbara is very happy to be in her new home
but Dawson is more like 'where's the fuckin' servants' to his butler
Shunda. Shunda says they all left for some reason and soon (not that
soon though) we find out why: Rosalba Neri got wind of Dawson's
marriage and killed herself by drowning. We get to see her body being
burned near the Ganges (and I really hope that isn't Neri's foot we
see in that shot, because those toes are gross). The funeral was
attended by Shunda and Dawson's creepy son Walter, who was also
eavesdropping in on the night Dawson dumped Neri. Oh, and no one saw
Neri's face because it was all bloated from being in the water. You
know where this is heading. The curse has befallen the household and
veteran fans of these films will be wondering whether there's going
to be some Scooby Doo shit on the horizon.
Dawson starts thinking that Neri is still alive, hearing her
necklace rattling, seeing her in reflections, thinking that a tiger
in the jungle contains her spirit. His doctor, who treated his
father, thinks it's all down to that Dawson madness creeping to the
surface. Meanwhile young Walter is putting the moves on his new mum,
teaching her how to play pool, showing her his art and staring at her
creepily which is a surprisingly effective strategy. He does the same
to his neighbour's wife too.
It isn't terribly exciting, however, and an awful lot of time is
spent talking before Dawson heads out the get that damn tiger. He
fixates on it as representing Neri and sets out to kill it
eventually, but a severe mauling by the tiger (Neri?) brings in the
final act of the film, which actually contains stuff like things
happening, notable events, and people moving slightly.
At least Larraz keeps it all vague so you're left to make you're own
mind up as to what's happened. I think there might have been nudity
in there too but not on the copy on YouTube. You know YouTube. R Budd
Dwyer blowing his brains out? No problem. Rosalba Neri's arse? Heaven forbid!
Underworld
(1951, Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Rate Furlan)
Notable
actors: Jacqueline Pierreux!
It
turns out that the Mario Merola school of crime movies didn't form
in a vacuum, as here we have a film that's high on tragedy and
crying, a few characters sing a song or two, there are petty
Neapolitan gangsters out on the take, and even pauper children.
I've got to admit though that Merola hasn't quite played a character
as dumb as Renato. Renato (Aldo Nicodemi, yet another Italian actor
who was killed in a car crash) has given up an honest living for a
life of crime because he's head over heels in love with Lydia
(Jacqueline Pierreux). Lydia on the other hand is all over the place,
because one minute she loves him but then she kind of loves the Mafia
boss who has employed Renato. He's alright with Lydia playing away
though, that is until Renato botches a jewellery robbery which
results in a dead jeweller and an angry mob boss.
Renato copes the best way he can by causing another human's death -
he goes home to bed and tells his mother to cover for him when the
cops show up. This enrages Renato's brother Mario (Franco Silva from
the perv-tastic PATRICK
STILL LIVES). Mario is an upstanding citizen, working as a
guard for what appears to be Italy's version of the merchant navy.
Mario is also a widower with a little kid that his mum looks after
while he's off on duty. He knows Renato is up to something but can't
quite figure it out, but he's going to find out shortly anyway
through a stupid coincidence.
Now I never picked up the mob boss's name because I'm not sure he
even had one, but let's call him Harry as he was played by an actor
called Harry Feist, who seems to have appeared in Renato Polselli's CRIME
IN MOON PARK (if anyone could upload that to YouTube, thanks
in advance!). The bar Harry operates out of is interesting for two
reasons: one is the singer/guitar player who plays songs while in the
bar, but also acts as Harry's lookout and spy while out in the city.
Sometimes he does both at the same time, turning up at heists belting
out a song that's probably about cigarette smuggling or clams and
spaghetti. The other is the dancer who appears a few times an does a
little dance number to the busker guy's tunes for no real reason
other than she's played by pretty real life ballerina Flora
Torrigiani. It's probably just as well these songs are in the film
(all written by director Rate Furlan) because there's not much plot.
What arises story wise is that Renato has to make up to Harry for
messing up the jewellery job by taking part in a big job - that of
robbing one of the merchant ships down on the docks. To gain
information for the job Harry has Lydia seduce one of the guards who
is, that's right, Renato's brother Mario. Bad timing too, because
Renato asked Lydia to marry him and she said no, so the dumbass goes
and gets drunk off his ass right before the big ship robbery...
This film is barely over an hour long so it's not going to be that
hard to sit through, and it does contain some action (and songs...so
many songs!). There's a couple of shoot-outs towards the end and one
character even commits suicide by shooting himself in the head, so
the Eurocrime elements are all there, except the rampant nudity and
car chases and funky music. Harry is quite a nasty character, even
ordering one of his men to beat another one of his goon's girlfriends
to death for causing a scene in a bar, so the polizioteschi mean
streak is already there.
The
Unknown Woman a.k.a. Without
Knowing Anything About Her (1969, Italy, Giallo, Director: Luigi Comencini)
Notable
actors: Philippe Leroy! Silvano Tranquili!
I've
got to admit that I fell asleep during this one, but whether or not
that was down to the film being almost ninety-nine percent dialogue
or whether it's because we have three baby pet rats in our house and
one of them spent a couple of days pretending it was dying is
unclear. It's okay now though in case you're wondering.
Insurance claims aren't exactly the most pulse-pounding reasons to
make a film, but this is what THE UNKNOWN WOMAN is all about;
a guy investigating an insurance claim because it sounds fairly dodgy
to him, and the insurance company wants him to dig up some dirt so
they don't need to pay. Philippe Leroy is that guy, and the plot
jumps back and forth in time as Philippe follows a young girl around
Milan and we find out exactly why he's doing that. What's not
explained is how she doesn't seem to notice him being about three
feet away from her for an entire day.
An old lady who was in good health has died suddenly, just shortly
after cutting her three eldest daughters out of the will. That means
that the 300 million insurance pay-out will go to the two youngest
siblings - arrogant asshole Orfeo, and rebellious but possibly
unstable Cinzia (Paola Pitagora from two gialli I can't find - HANDS
IN THE POCKET and THE
HASSLED HOOKER). Cinzia, however, has disowned the family, so
the first third of the film details Phillipe interviewing the rest of
them and trying to find Cinzia's whereabouts.
The family are how you would expect rich Italian families to be -
aloof, bored, debauched and cynical. Only one sister seems genuinely
upset her mother is dead, but others in the family are very
suspicious of Philippe, as it the family lawyer and rich husband of
one of the sisters (played by Silvano Tranquili). Led by Silvano, the
family are going to be contesting the will, which is going to get in
Philippe's way further down the line.
When he finally does meet Cinzia, Philippe pretends he's never met
her before and merely offers to give her shelter from the rain and a
ride to wherever she wants to go. This being the late sixties, that's
all the chat-up lines he needs before they both end up in bed
together, but the next day he reveals his true intentions and Cinzia
rather bloodily tries to kill herself.
Philippe saves her, and soon a romance seems to blossom between the
two...or does it? This is a giallo in its most mysterious form - that
of the viewer having no clue who is telling the truth, who is being
sincere, who is playing the long con, and who knows about all the
mind games in the first place. That's what holds your interest
throughout (unless you've spent the night listening to a rat
breathing and fretting about it), and Ennio
Morricone's score helps along the way. That's all the plot
you're getting too, so you'll just have to watch it to find out what
happens. There are plenty of twists in the last act, even if the film
doesn't have much violence in it.
Philippe Leroy does a good job here as he's allowed to move around
and show some emotion, which makes his character's real motives very
difficult to pick up on. Director Luigi Comencini went down a much
more light-hearted road with his next two gialli - THE
SUNDAY WOMAN and THE
CAT.
Veruschka
- Poetry Of A Woman (1971, Italy,
Fantasy/Drama, Director: Franco Rubartelli)
Notable
actors: Veruschka! Luigi Pistilli! Maria Cumani Quasimodo (the witch
from Umberto Lenzi's House
of Witchcraft)!
Guest review by Professor John M, Dober, Head Film Bufter of the Department of Critical Analysis and Talking Bollocks About Film, University of Gowkthrapple, Scotland.
Very
much a product of its time, VERUSCHKA - POETRY OF A WOMAN,
takes the Seventies notion of the shedding of the established norms
and the excitement of freeing the self, and somehow predicts the new
millennium's depressing trend of self-absorbency, selfies, and the
need to alert the world to every microscopic change and event in
one's life. Here, for a whole one hour and forty minutes, you can
witness the lead character break down every life choice, every
discarded notion, and every possible future to the point where
virtually nothing else happens throughout the course of the film save
for a proto-supermodel staring out of a window of a car and lapsing
into a fantasy world where not even one version of herself can
satiate the hungry ego.
Veruschka chases herself through an icy forest, meets herself as a
child, burns effigies of herself and sees herself dying in multiple
ways. Despite the near absence of a plot, we become aware that the
film's intention is to make us witness Veruschka explore her own mind
in almost agonising detail, all the while accompanied by Luigi
Pistilli's almost lycanthropic scowling countenance. It is a road
trip from Hell - one that contains the excitement of a doctor's
waiting room, the sexual tension of fairly sparse Post Office, the
unbearable anticipation of the delivery of some Chinese food, the
kind that may or may not contain too much garlic and therefore give
rise to complaints about one's breath in the morning.
The story, for those neophytes that still demand such things from
Italian cinema, is concerned with Veruschka making the right choice
in leaving her lover Michael in the snowy expanses of some Tuetonic
region and hitting the road, as it were, with dishevelled, sardonic manager/lover
Luigi Pistilli. Upon embarking on such an endeavour, has Veruschka
betrayed her own self and turned her back on the true materials of
life that make us all happy, like young love, freedom, and rolling
about in the snow? To answer these questions Veruschka embarks on
flights of fancy, distorted adventures into a dream land where she
is, at least superficially, in control.
Faced with her own incessant ticking of her biological clock,
Veruschka tries to solve the possibility of never experiencing her
maternal instincts by burying a surfeit of dolls on a beach,
galvanising dolls with wax and keeping them in a secret room, and
staring at a child picking up bits of a broken doll, all subtle
symbolism I'm sure you'd agree. She also seeks to escape her
relationship with Pistilli, envisioning herself falling from a cliff,
running herself over in a car, and just fantasising about Pistilli
just shooting her outright. It must be highlighted that although
Veruschka is introspected and heavily pursuing some sort of internal
isolationism, Pistilli just has a game of soccer with some kids and
gives Veruschka a sock to the jaw.
It sounds like I'm being factious with regards to this film, but the
seemingly interminable monologues are bolstered by fantastical
images, most of which involve physical distortions to model
Veruschka's face, being it encased in wax, held within a cage,
painted like some exotic creature or replicated by ersatz copies
which are then destroyed.
The biggest highlight of this film is Ennio
Morricone's soundtrack, which flits from lush lounge music to
soaring symphonic simplicity before descending into atonal Sun
Ra-like cathartic percussion exercises, even sometimes delving into
uneasy funky experiments. The fact that the soundtrack as presented
is almost an hour and twenty minutes long should be indicative of how
little dialogue the film contains, and how much celluloid is given
over to surrealism and Morricone's music.
VERUSCHKA - POETRY OF A WOMAN is must for those who find
getting out of a chair a bit too fast as a bit of a rush.
I'm John M. Dober. I review films. I can also retract my testicles straight up into my body if I feel a predator is nearby.
A
Violent Life (1962, Italy, Crime,
Director: Paolo Heusch and/or Brunello Rondi)
Notable
actors: Franco Citti! Enrico Maria Salerno!
Another
early film that details how the disaffected teenage boys of Italy
act out in various violent ways and blame it on society, starring
Franco Citti, who did pretty much the same film in the previous
year's ACCATTONE. Like that
film, this one is also written
by Pier Paolo Pasolini but not directed by him, for this film is
directed by Paolo Heusch of WEREWOLF
IN A GIRLS' DORMITORY fame! And to add to the confusion
Brunello Rondi is also listed as director. He directed the absolutely
jaw-dropping film THE DEMON,
which I recommend more than just about any other film on this page.
Judging by the relentless grim content of A VIOLENT LIFE, I'm
going to speculate that Pasolini was like the Morrisey of Italian
films. In the film ACCATTONE, Franci Citti's character is so
self-centred that he even tricks his own estranged son into thinking
he wants a hug when all he really wants is to steal the necklace the
boy is wearing. His character in A VIOLENT LIFE, Tommaso, is
nearly as bad as that, at least to begin with, but at least is
changed, or tries to change because of certain events.
Just like all those other films that have jobless, macho youths
hanging around, this one starts with a bunch of jobless, macho youths
hanging around. They are all pretty interchangeable, save for Tommaso
and a mate of his who does a bit of singing. Tommaso and his mates
don't fancy the idea of working, but they do love to go out at night
and terrorise people, A
CLOCKWORK ORANGE style. They got out and find a necking
couple to beat up and possibly rape (bearing in mind this is nineteen
sixty-two, that's kind of glossed over). Then, they rob a gas station
but end up with a pittance. Tommaso's life doesn't seem to be going
anywhere until he bumps into the innocent Stella, and now he's got to
try and act like he's not a complete asshole.
The first date involves going to the cinema to watch a HERCULES
film! Stella's acting all engrossed, but Tommaso wants a little
loving and doesn't pick up on any of the subtle hints Stella is
giving off that he's not getting any that night. I mean, she was
acting like she was interested in an Italian Peplum film for a start
man. Nobody does that. Stella doesn't maintain contact however, so
Tommaso's brings in his singer friend to serenade her, but there's a
problem - his guitar is in the pawn shop and he needs cash. Tommaso
knows how to get - he simply robs a young woman in the street and
it's job done. Remember - Tommaso - Asshole.
The serenade goes well, although I was wondering why Tommaso brought
about ten of his mates with him. Stella switches on her bedroom light
and looks out of the window, just before a bunch of other guys turn
up and start taking the piss out of Tommaso. He deals with it the
only way he knows how - by stabbing the guy to death (You see?
Asshole). This gets Tommaso eighteen months in prison for
manslaughter, and yet somehow Stella decides to stay by his side.
That's just the start of Tommaso and Stella's journey together.
Tommaso is all about getting a job and doing right by Stella, but his
macho insecurity leads to him giving her a slap when they try to love
in the middle of some wasteground (classy!). Will Tommaso ever be
able to change in order to finally win over Stella for good? Maybe a
bout of TB and a run-in with communists may change his mind, or a
biblical level flood.
I sound kind of down on this film but I enjoyed it. Franco Citti's a
strange kind of actor. He can show rage well, but other emotions just
result in a blank, incredulous star, and I think that's a deliberate
move on Citti's part to convey that Tommaso hasn't really got a clue
what to do when faced with something that isn't part of his clique of
chest thumping macho men. Not to mix confusion with stupidity though,
because Tommaso can turn into a viper at the drop of a hat, still
wearing the same expression. The cinematography is as dark as the
tone of the film itself, and set mostly in some part of Rome that's
part ghetto, part apocalyptic landscape. I couldn't help wonder how
they did that flood scene in the shanty town. Outstanding set design there.
This is probably one of those neo-realist films, isn't it? I don't
know much about them, mainly because you have to pay for them and I'm
a tight-arsed Scotsman.
Wanted
Ringo a.k.a. The
Revenge of Ringo (1970, Italy, Western/Giallo, Director: Mario Pinzauti)
Notable
actors: Mickey Hargitay...for about ten minutes
It
says here that the film was due to star Mickey Hargitay, but he had
to leave after his son was attacked by a tiger in California? Weird.
Was it that event which pushed this whole film into giallo territory?
We'll never know, but the plot does centre around his character
vanishing into thin air.
You see, Mickey was hired by rich landowner Don Alonso to figure out
what was causing a mysterious run of deaths on his ranch. Mickey
instead fell in love with Don Alonso's daughter Pilar and the next
thing you know, he's finding strange totems in his room and doing a
disappearing act. Some time later, Mickey's brother Ringo and a
sheriff fella come looking for Mickey. Separately, mind you. I'm not
sure if it was worth pointing that out.
Ringo gets hired by some enemy of Don Alonso but on the way to the
ranch this guy has some sort of fit and dies, spouting a mysterious
name through all the foam he's spitting up. Ringo finally gets to the
ranch to find his brother still gone, Pilar now single and giving him
the eye, and many people either having fits and dying or dying in the
regular 'getting shot/stabbed' method popular in these films. But who
is the killer and where are they getting those little totems from?
Ridiculously cheap in every aspect, from the sets, the acting, the
editing, the script and the music, the film still delivers in the
mystery stakes as Ringo and the sheriff run around the place trying
to get clues from the rapidly diminishing pool of witnesses and
accomplices. There's no skimping on the body count either, as the
killer cuts a swathe through the cast and Ringo guns down a shitload
of hired guns working for the killer.
Plus, the film is only 73 minutes long so won't take up much of your
time. It's oddly enjoyable.
War
of the Planets (1966, Italy,
Sci-fi, Director: Antonio Margheriti)
Notable
actors: Franco Nero! Tony Russel! John Bartha (it says on the IMDB -
I didn't see him. Incidentally, both Wikipedia and the IMDB don't
have any mention on Bartha being dead, which would make him either
one hundred or nearly one hundred years old!), Umberto Raho! That guy
who was in that Jess Franco film called Succubus. I'd love to tell
you his name but the internet is so shitty tonight, so I guess we'll
just never know. Thanks, Virgin Media!
As
I continue my journey through the cinema of the past in order to
avoid mentally confronting the events of just now, I have learned
that in science fiction films of the sixties and seventies, you can
make dialogue more futuristic by dropping in cosmological terms into
the script and therefore I'm going to do the same in my galactic
review of this space-ass astro-film.
Not to be confused with Alfonso Breschia's COSMOS:
WAR OF THE PLANETS, which is by default the best of
Breschia's space anti-epics*,
WAR OF THE PLANETS is one of the several dozen or so sci-fi
films Antonio Margheriti made in the sixties before moving on to
actual good films. This one starts of promising enough with
dangerously high galactic-cheese levels, but soon descends into
boredom as the horrible alien enemy turns out to be...smoke. By the
end, I felt like I was on some sort of intergalactic journey, only to
find myself the only passenger onboard the spaceship that hadn't been
put into hypersleep. It honestly took me three Earth days to get
through this one. Mostly because I was watching Karen videos on
stellar-YouTube and playing Fortnite. Those kids aren't very good at
shooting people in the face!
The film details the antics of Earth's frontline defence, made up of
several space stations that have names like Delta-one, Gamma-three,
and all that bollocks. Everybody is all happy and getting ready to do
some astro-sixties terrible dancing to crappy solar-beat music, but
on one of the many different space stations, some green smoke has
possessed Michel Lemoine (NOW the internet is working) and he's going
to be spouting some pretty insane lunar-bollocks in order to get the
many good guys in the film to understand what the fuck the aliens
want from Earth. I'm still not sure myself.
In what turned out to be the only enjoyable part of the film, all
the defenders of Earth have a big party and some astronauts even
venture outside to use their bodies to spell out "Happy New
Year" with their bodies. Anyone familiar with Margheriti's work
knows that this means he gets to break out the old models, which is
still more realistic than the actors who have to actually pretend to
space walk, which in this film means being swung around on a hook. It
was pretty funny when one guy has to pretend he was spacewalking
while firmament-drunk.
Things start getting boring when this green smoke starts turning up
on Margheriti's model sets and various crews try to fight it, which
leads to various actors trying to shoot smoke with their '.38s' and
then turning to stone (kind of). Most people the smoke attacks end up
in some kind of suspended animation, and there was some sort of
explanation for this, but by the time they got around to it, I was
almost comatose from how boring the film was and for all I know I was
having some sort of space-hallucination.
I haven't enough life span left to track down all of Antonio
Margheriti's sci-fi films (although I get the feeling I'm going to
regret saying that), but this is astro-marginally better than ASSIGNMENT:
OUTER SPACE and BATTLE
OF THE WORLDS. It's still not good though, which is why I
haven't mentioned anything about the actors or even characters.
Franco Nero is in it, but he and various other actors all look the
same, so it's hard to keep track with what's going on. I think there
was a bit about food appearing in strange things that dropped from
the ceiling and a bunch of dead spacemen at the bottom of a bin, but
who knows. You see, this is how you review a film - by hazily
recalling things you might have seen in the film, then trying to make
lame jokes based around cosmological phrases.
Now astro-fuck off before I kick you in the supermassive black hole,
you low-ionization nuclear emission line region, red-shifting,
galactic bulge!
*
For the record, it has been detailed that there's five of these
bloody films, but there's only four. Listed on the IMDb are BATTLE
OF THE STARS and WAR OF THE PLANETS, which are the
same film. If you want to save several hours of your life, I can
detail these films for you. COSMOS:
WAR OF THE PLANETS is the best of the four, as it goes down
a kind of 'PLANET
OF THE VAMPIRES' horror route in its last third, It also,
very strangely, has a character sing 'I belong to Glasgow', which is
where I live. WAR OF THE ROBOTS
is the most action-orientated film of the four, but if you've watch
that then you'll know that this is a bad thing. STAR
ODYSSEY is more humorous than the others, including two
robots who are suicidal because they can't have sex. THE
BEAST IN SPACE is the
sexier of the four, and includes Sirpa Lane as a space chick being
threatened by a goat-legged fellow with a huge tummy banana but
features little actual action and is the worst of the lot.
So there you go. I've wasted my time so you don't have to.
War
of the Worlds: Next Century
(1981, Poland, Sci-fi, Director: Piotr Szulkin)
Notable
actors: Roman Wilhelmi!
I
guess director/writer Piotr Szulkin wondered one day what H G Wells'
War of the Worlds would have been like if it was written by George
Orwell. WAR OF THE WORLDS: NEXT CENTURY is the result, and in
2021 a shitload of the themes and topics covered here are rather
close to the bone. It's also a bit of a satire too, all done in an
non-pretentious arthouse fashion.
It's December 1999 and the Martians have landed on Earth, but not in
a violent, killing sort of way. Via a rather rubbish reverse shot of
a rocket taking off, the public's most trusted news reporter, Iron
Idem, informs everyone that the Martians have much to offer mankind,
as long as we help them out, too. That's when things start changing
for the population and for Idem, as the first change involves him
having to read out a prepared script when he prefers to read his own.
The next changes are much, much worse. And rather familiar.
The government informs the populace that they now have to stay at
home, unless they agree to give a sample of blood to the Martians,
and to do that they need to take a friendliness test that gets them a
Life Pass in order for them to walk outside to go to the resource
centre to give blood in the first place. These rules are enforced not
by the Martians themselves (who appear to be small fat guys painted
silver and wearing bubble jackets) but by human officials, be it
stuck-up office jobsworths or the brutal guards who patrol the streets.
Idem is enraged at the script being written for him, and someone
higher up seems to have noticed, because that night the guards and a
couple of Martians burst into his home, kidnap his wife, destroy all
his property and turf him out into the street. He still gets to keep
his job though, working for a TV
company whose slogan is 'Reality: We Create It', as the public
love him and believe what he says. They also seem to believe that the
terrible wig he wears during broadcasts is real, despite it looking
awful. People always act surprised to find he's bald in real life.
Idem's priority now is to find his wife, and to do that he's going
to have to conform to many of these new government regulations,
including taking a friendliness test to prove he's friendly to the
Martians, which involve his
ear getting tagged like a dairy cow, giving
blood at a resource centre, and spouting all the bollocks his
new masters have him speak to the public. Every journey to the studio
becomes an increasingly horrible nightmare as the guards brutalise
the public, and he's still not getting any nearer finding out where
his wife is...
Now I know this film is a commentary about life in the Soviet Bloc,
but you can certainly apply this to life so far in the 2020s. I'm no
conspiracy nut and it would take the collusion of thousands of people
from hundreds of countries to pretend there's a fake disease out
there killing folk, but it's not too far a stretch to consider that
those in charge may have seen this crisis as an chance to bring in a
little more control over people, is it? I'm not saying that's the
reality of the situation, but how many people have you spoken to who
have said 'something's not right'? There are several hints throughout
the film that there might not even be a Martian visitation at all
(which would explain the lazy reverse shot of a rocket taking off).
My favourite one is near the end of the film, where Idem has had
enough of all the bullshit and is standing
in a public toilet when a Martian walks in. Idem smashes it over
the head with an iron bar and it collapses into a urinal. Approaching
it, Idem asks "Why are you doing this?" to which it
replies, with its brains hanging out of its head "We were
promised candy." Did Idem kill a kid?
The film is also about how readily mankind is to conform to anything
as long as they themselves can live an easy life, and how easily
people would dismiss the truth in order to believe a more comfortable
lie, as Idem outlines in a speech: "You assimilate only what
affirms you in the conviction that passivity is virtue and necessity,
because it is precisely what you want to believe". I've got to
say at this point that actor Roman Wihelmi is brilliant here. Looking
like a cross between Martin Balsam and Tommy Lee Jones, he plays the
part very subdued, but with a lot of turmoil going on inside.
I highly recommend this one, which is part of a trilogy I'm planning
on watching, including O-BI, O-BA.
THE END OF CIVILIZATION
and GA-GA:
GLORY TO THE HEROES. The look of the film is rather good too
by the way - going from stark communist concrete and trucks to a kind
of neon-noir look.
We
Still Kill The Old Way (1967,
Italy, Eurocrime, Director: Elio Petri)
Notable
actors: Gian Maria Volonte! Irene Papas! Gabriele Ferzetti! Luigi
Pistilli! Leopoldo Trieste? Didn't see him
Gian
Maria Volonte's got himself into some hot water this time! Doesn't
he know that in Sicily, if someone gets murdered, you just keep your
trap shut and let whoever the police randomly arrest go to jail?
Luigi Pistilli keeps getting letters telling him he's a dead man,
and it's making him a bit paranoid. Nevertheless, one morning he says
goodbye to his wife, then his lover, and sets off with his friend to
go hunting, only to find himself the prey. Two corpses later, we've
got a big Sicilian funeral to go to while the police chat about the
people attending, including a well-respected lawyer (Gabriele
Ferzetti) whose cousin (Irene Papas) was married to one of the
victims, and Gian Maria Volonte, a professor friend of the two who
starts poking in places that should not be poked.
Pistilli is generally thought to be the target as he was a bit of a
fanny rat and some family members are arrested, but they are all
illiterate so how could they cobble together those threatening
letters? Volonte also finds that the words in the letter were from a
Vatican-based newspaper, which leads him to the priesthood. Oh, and a
lot of people are related in this film, so one of the priests is the
uncle of Papas and Ferzetti.
It's a formula you'll see a lot of in these films, so it's just as
well the lead actors are good! Volonte has the hots for the widow
Papas and has to basically restrain himself every times he meets her,
while Papas kind of has the hots for him too, leading to all kinds of
awkward moments. Volonte is very good at the bookish professor who is
just too smart and curious for his own good, while Papas just
smoulders as the widow.
It looks absolutely scorching hot in Sicily in this film, and just
like Damiano Damiani's DAY OF
THE OWL, the island itself is a character, with all the
strange culture that lives on its land.
The only let down of the film is that the plot is a bit predictable,
but it's by no means a bad film.
White
Comanche (1968, Spain, Western,
Director: Joze Briz Mendez)
Notable
Actors: William Shatner! Grumpy old bastard Joseph Cotten! Victor
Isreal! William Shatner again!
I
leave reservation and travel many miles on my BMX to see this film
many moons ago. Me heap excited to see Comanche people on film as me
feel tribe under-represented in the cinematic medium. Um Squaw
'couldn't be arsed' so me go on lonesome. Me not happy with this and
tell squaw so, but it her time of the moon and I guess my peace pipe
go unpuffed that night.
Me not know who William Shatner is but me not remember many ginger
folk in tribe. And he be two brothers? One of which take Peyote? We
not takers of such drugs. Our um only weakness is Big Mac from the
MacDonalds we have on reservation. William Shatner look like he like
Big Mac too. Quite a lot. In fact, Shatner look like buffalo sausage
just about to burst.
So there's one Shatner who bad (and he indian one! Not good!) and
one who boring cowboy type who I guess is Indian too). Indian Shatner
want kill white man for boom-stick and horses and cowboy Shatner want
stick tomahawk in Rosanna Yanni's Happy Hunting Ground.
Also, grumpy old Bastard Joseph Cotten got problems with white ranch
men fighting but they seem to kill each other without Shatner getting
involved too much, although this meant big gun fight happen too soon.
Grumpy old Bastard Joseph Cotten good here, but better in LADY
FRANKENSTEIN (which good because you see Rosalba Neri's
Teepees! That make my peace pipe stand up! Mind you, you get to see
her under-scalp in SLAUGHTER
HOTEL).
Shatner then fight Shatner in end. This a bit bloodier than usual
film but crappy too due to cheapness and Shatner crapness. How!
White
Pop Jesus (1980, Italy, Musical,
Director: Luigi Petrini)
Notable
actors: Stella Carnacina!
I
love WHITE POP JESUS, me. It takes all the funk and disco of JESUS
CHRIST SUPERSTAR, tries to mix it with the usual Italian
comedy, has a Jesus in it who just kind of wanders about, judging
people, and yet provides so many awesome and unintentionally funny
moments that in my melted brain constitutes some sort of classic. If
you don't use the word 'classic' in the way it's supposed to be used.
Be warned though - I've yet to find a copy of this film with
subtitles, even auto-translate titles, so the film's dialogue has had
to be interpreted by my basic, clunky grasp of Italian. Not that the
film is big on plot to be honest. It's more like a series of scenes
strung together before another kick-ass disco tune starts up.
Jesus, who seems to live on the set of FAME,
gets fed up one day and decides to come to Earth. This he does by
changing into a white costume and walking into some smoke, which
leads to him walking out of the sea in Italy. Immediately he finds
himself stopping two Mafiosi trying to extort money from office
worker Stella Caracina. This he does by reminding the criminals that
Hell and the Devil awaits. The gangsters scarper, and Stella
instantly falls in love with Jesus, who leaves her just long enough
for her to sing the song "Unisex", which may be about
Stella renouncing modern technology and working life to go off and
follow Jesus, but using my command of Italian seems to be about a her
desire to piss out of a window of a moving car in front of some nuns.
Jesus in the meantime has bumped into the Devil and his entourage of
dozens of dancers. The Devil shows Jesus the life of hedonism in a
remarkably funky sequence (where, hilariously, Jesus guilt trips two
gay men having a snog to the point that one of them walks away!).
Meanwhile, the gangsters and various other corrupt members of society
meet up to discuss how to fleece people of more money (I think), and
also serve to introduce crappy slapstick that kind of disrupts all
the awesome music.
Stella isn't taking no for an answer from Jesus and even picks him
up hitchhiking while dressed as a man, but Jesus gives her the slip.
Jesus is having a kind of crisis of conscience at this point as he's
supposed to be all virtuous and pure, and engages in a debate with
God, where I'm pretty sure God gives him the go ahead to give Stella
one! Get in there my son! I'm guessing God's going to be kind of
tuning in there when Jesus does the business. I know I would. This
also prompts another song from our divine duo which by my translation
is about whether or not it is morally wrong to kidnap a bison and
stuff loads of contraband up its arse in order to smuggle booze into Slovenia.
I've got to admit that the Jesus action is kind of broken up in a
bad way by the crime syndicate, as if they've been allocated the
crappest songs of the film. So does the policeman and whatever he's
up to, but then again Jesus gets to call on his Dad's wrath when two
guys on a moped steal his scarf. He also somehow makes shoplifting
okay for people and gets involved with some hippies. It's around this
time the songs kind of dry up until Jesus comes up against heroin,
and the Devil!
When a guy overdoses in Jesus' arms and dies, he's got to go and
find out what injecting skag is all about, which leads to another
highlight - when Jesus meets the Devil in a cave full of junkies and
we get a choreographed sequence where a thin dancing girl with spiky
hair randomly changes into a giant syringe that the Devil then points
at while smiling. AH! I get it - he's trying to tempt Jesus with some
quality smack! Maybe Jesus could have tried some and then got his Dad
to miracle that monkey off his back. Also, this entire sequence seems
to happen in Christ's mind while he's holding a dead junky. It
happens to us all at one time or another.
I've also got to admit that the bit where Jesus stops two
machine-gun toting nuns from dynamiting a TV mast went right over my
head, but that just sets Jesus up with two extra female followers so
we get another of my favourite songs, which may be called 'Jesus'.
Now, in my work we get a lot of European students that come over to
Scotland to witness how horrible it is here so they can appreciate
the country they live in a little more (usually from Austria, Spain,
or Italy) and one Italian girl was game enough to watch this
particular song and try and translate it for me. Sadly, her
translation was that the song was about the three girls going on
about how Jesus was great and sweet, but I think she might have just
been saying that in order for me to stop playing the film, because by
my translation of the song is about the three girls begging Jesus to
funnel feed them ice cream and cake until they all grow enormously
fat in order that they can smother him to death with their collective
gigantic arses in some sort of obesity-fuelled suicide pact.
Eventually we get to my favourite song in the film, "Come
Navigante", which was released as a single by the guy who plays
Jesus (Awana Gana Agawanaganawanawagana Gananawanaganawa). There's
even a promotional video for this song, and the b-side is another
song from the film. I truly love this song, that plays out while
Jesus leads his followers down into the town square. With it's
strangely uplifting, gorgeous chorus, this song may be about how
faith effects the human condition, but by my translation seems to be
about Jesus inviting everyone he meets to go to the town centre so
they can witness him buggering a frozen chicken back to life. Also,
the song he sings when he gets to the square isn't so good.
It's around this point that the film decides to include some plot
when the accident-prone cop arrests everybody including Jesus (I
think), due to a female Judas selling him out (once again, I think).
We do get another song here sung by Stella, who laments losing Jesus
forever, maybe, but by my translation the song seems to be about her
not being able to decide what her favourite King Crimson album is. It
all gets rather confusing by this point as it seems that rather than
be in jail, Jesus would rather teleport back to heaven or something.
I have no idea, to be honest. All the characters in the film appear
in some sort of cattle grid shaped like a crucifix while an
instrumental version of Come Navigante play out before some sort of
storm happens.
I've reviewed this film once before for the IMDB, and in that review
I noted that I was very aware that I was the only person on Earth
that was watching WHITE POP JESUS, and by extension, that
meant that I was the only person in the universe watching WHITE
POP JESUS. That's all paid off now as I have been entered into
the Guinness Book of Records as The Person Who Has Watched WHITE
POP JESUS The Most Times. I've watched it twice!
Who?
a.k.a. The Sensuous Assassin
(1970, France/Italy, Giallo, Director: Leonard Keigel)
Notable
actors: Romy Schneider! Maurice Ronet! Gabrielle Tinti!
The
catchphrase 'that escalated quickly' is everywhere now, but it is
really relevant to this film, where lovers Romy Schneider and
Gabrielle Tinti go from having an argument to straight up insults to
domestic violence to Romy trying to blow Tinti's head off - within
the first thirty seconds of the film. It if weren't for the credits
having to play out I bet Tinti wouldn't have hesitated before driving
his car off that cliff. But he does, so the credits can be all French
and stuff, this being a French take on the old school giallo plot.
Tinti does take things to the extreme by diving off the cliff, but
Romy Schneider manages to jump out of the car before it goes over. A
passer-by calls the law, and it's quickly discovered that Tinti's
body is nowhere to be seen, having been possibly taken away by the
tide or maybe lifted into the air by some really strong seagulls.
Romy doesn't seem terribly put out about it mind you, and somehow is
able to just get the police to stop asking her so many annoying questions.
One guy who will spend most of the entire film asking annoying
questions is Tinti's brother Maurice Ronet. He wasn't terribly close
to his brother but feels the need to find out what's going on. He
meets up with Romy and notes the way she doesn't seem that arsed
about Tinti's death (I thought she was just 'being French'). Romy
changes her tune slightly when Maurice tries to drop her off at her
apartment and she sees something which disturbs her at her front
door, so instead she asks to stay at Maurice's house for a while.
Romy is a bit damaged by the relationship with Tinti, who was known
to be a bit of a bastard, but she pretends to Maurice that they were
in love. Maurice, on the other hand, is convinced that Romy killed
Tinti, but when he presses her on the subject, she seduces him. I
didn't think it was appropriate for Maurice to ask Romy if she'd
killed his brother right in the middle of doing the nasty. but maybe
that's the way he got his kicks. This takes place about two days
after his brother's death, too.
The basic plot is this - Maurice is convinced that Romy has killed
his brother somehow and tries to unveil the truth by tracking their
last movements next to the cliff and trying to get the truth out of
Romy, who insists she's telling the truth while at the same time
convinced that Tinti (from so many Laura Gesmer films and the
lightweight, fun MYSTERE) is
still alive and haunting her, like when she's in a very fancy
shopping mall and sees Tinti everywhere. To be honest, there's a lot
more Maurice asking her about his brother's death and a lot less
possible haunting than you'd expect in this one.
It's not bad though - stylish, well composed, and you can almost
smell those gauloises cigarettes through the screen. Things did not
end well for Romy Schneider in real life.
Who
Wants to Kill Sara? (1992, Italy,
Giallo, Director: Gianpalo Tescari)
Notable
actors: Luciano Bartoli!
Who
wants to sit through WHO WANTS TO KILL SARA? It sounds like a
sleazy giallo, has a plot that suggests some filthy sleaziness with
some murder thrown in, but in reality is an endurance test of
soap-opera level drama where literally nothing happens.
Sara (Nancy Brilli), is a high-flying divorce lawyer. Independent,
strong-willed, annoying, Sara is powerful in the courtroom and dirty
in the toilets at the court, getting jiggy with boyfriend Max. She
and Max have been involved in a whirlwind romance and Sara is finally
going to get married. It seems all is good in her life, even though
her stupid mother blabbed to Max that it isn't the first time she's
been engaged, but that all ends when she receives some flowers with a
note saying "Don't get married". She also receives a phone
call telling her she'll be killed if she gets married, a call from
someone who goes on at some length about having knowledge of her
body.
Keeping this secret from Max, Sara embarks on an adventure to track
down former lovers and ask them if they are trying to kill her, but
is it hunky doctor Andrew? Moody librarian Danielle? Steamy ex-lover
Nick? Other guy Edward? Drug dealer Nico? Car Mechanic Ralph?
Interior decorator Clive? Chinchilla supplier Dave? Holistic
therapist Sky? Irish Republic terrorist Colm? Tandoori chef Ranjit?
Marine Biologist Nando? Former quarterback turned actor Fred? Plumber
Mario? Guy who says "Stick with this, I'll think of a funny one
at some point" Steven? Three-legged nonce Rolf? Angry Chef
Gordon? Talking car driver turned very popular singer in Germany
David? Man in black Johnny? Awesome action star who can ride a
motorbike up a flight of stairs Massimo? Gigantic radioactive lizard
Godzilla? Elusive sub-atomic particle Higg's? Huge white whale Moby?
Editor of website who says "We get it, you don't have much to
say about the film, now stop this" Fred? (No, no, continue
slicing your own throat.
- Fred)
This really does play out like some afternoon film. Sara gets
threatened. She discusses it with her flatmate. She tracks down an
ex. The ex acts strangely. Max gets suspicious. They have a tiff.
Rinse. Repeat. For an hour and a half. I compared it to a soap opera,
but there are scarier soap opera plot lines than this. Remember PRISONER:
CELL BLOCK H? There was a prison officer who was a serial
killer. The reveal was a masterstroke in horror as the guy innocently
wanders around a boiler house, thinking about an inmate who arrived,
only for the camera to pan up to reveal her bloody body jammed in the
pipes. I was on really strong acid when I happened upon that scene
when randomly switching channels after a night out. Freaked me out in
a literal sense and hooked me on the programme for years. It's on YouTube
if you're curious under "Prisoner
Cell Block H Horror: David Bridges".
In conclusion, I don't have much to say about this film.
Spoilers:
There aren't even any murders!
Wife
By Night a.k.a. Beautiful by Day,
Wife by Night (1971, Italy, Giallo, Director: Nello Rossati)
Notable
actors: Eva Czemerys! Nino Castelnuovo! Fernando Cerulli! Carla
Mancini! Umberto Raho (who doesn't appear in the film)
When
is a giallo not a giallo, but is also a giallo? When it features a
murder that we see carried out by the murderer, and then watch as the
murderer is arrested, and then watch the rest of the film unfold as a
flashback containing many giallo tropes, like sleaze, colour schemes,
eccentric characters, and a room full of mannequins.
I'm a bit rusty on Germaine Greer's "The Female Eunuch",
but I'm sure the whole point of the book was to highlight that every
female's desire was to marry a guy and then financially support him
by becoming a prostitute. This is what happens to Paola in this film.
Her husband is a failing art dealer working in a gallery strangely
similar to that of the gallery in THE
BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, and when Paola's assistant
suddenly reveals that she runs a discreet little boudoir where Paola
can make some cash servicing men, Paola reluctantly signs up for it.
To make things even weirder, this conversation happens in a room full
of mannequins, where every time the scene cuts from her pimp to
Paola, Paola has strangely changed her entire attire. I also got huge
Emperor Palpatine vibes from this sales assistant, what with the mind
games and what not.
Paola isn't exactly the best hooker in the world, but we get a
fairly detailed glimpse into her life as her clients range from
normal Johns to utter perverts like living cadaver Fernando Cerulli,
who likes to tie her up, or the old man who likes to take sleazy
pictures of her, and even the brain dead body builder who falls in
love with her, stalks her, and beats the crap out of the old man who
likes to take sleazy pictures of her. Understandably, Paola is a mess
by the time all this crap fizzles out.
What she doesn't know is that Giorgio knows all about it and has
been living the dream. Strangely, somewhere in there something is
feeling guilt, because Giorgio now can't get his little Jimmy to
high-five Paola's pelvic drapery! Man, who'd have thought having your
wife degrade herself for cash would have an effect on your toffee apple.
Strangely watchable due to the sleaze and weirdness, WIFE BY NIGHT
is another weird film from the guy who made TOP
LINE (or as I like to call it, Django Terminator Goonies).
He also made the giallo that's not a giallo THE
CAT IN HEAT.
For Carla Mancini fans, Carla turns up as a maid who serves coffee
and doesn't say anything.
Will
Our Heroes Be Able To Find Their Friend Who Has Mysteriously
Disappeared In Africa? (1968,
Italy, Comedy/Adventure, Director: Ettore Scola)
Notable
actors: Alberto Sordi! Nino Manfredi! Bernard Blier! Erika Blanc!
In
non-Italian countries, and probably Italy itself now that I think
about, Alberto Sordi is the second most likely actor you'll see in a
framed picture on a wall in a restaurant, comically eating some
spaghetti. I pass a place in Glasgow city centre on occasion while
going to work (as I change my route often to avoid bandits and
Italian film fan groupies), and this restaurant has a window display
of Sordi tucking into a pile of pasta. It also has at least three
pictures of actor Toto doing the same thing, which is why Toto is the
number one actor you'll see in a framed picture in (paragraph
continues in this fashion for some time).
What I'm getting at in a really terrible way is that although I'm
aware of Alberto Sordi, I've never watched one of his films until
now. I've covered other comic actors like Ugo Tognazzi, Nino
Manfredi, and Jerry Cala, so I should probably throw an Alberto Sordi
one in there too. There's probably a Bombolo film or two to be
covered since he's in those Tomas Milian cop films,
and I'm struggling through my first Pippo Franco film, but don't
hold out for a Toto one because I can't stand him. Don't tell the
Mafia I don't like him either, as they loved him so much they had a
second, separate funeral for him after he died.
Turns out I picked a good one, because the comedy in this film is
mixed with bit of melancholy, a bit of fantasy, and a whole load of
social commentary. Alberto Sordi also seems very good at injecting
his characters with a lot of humanity. which means we get to witness
his character go through a lot of mixed emotions on his travels. In
the beginning, he's an arrogant, hard-working publisher who is always
in high gear, and at first he's not that interested when his
sister-in-law pleads for him to track down his brother-in-law Nino
Manfredi. However, he's soon drawn to the idea of adventure, lapsing
into fantasies like those in the TV show THE
FALL
AND RISE OF
REGINALD PERRIN, and before you know he's off to Africa,
dragging his very reserved accountant (Bernard Blier) along for the ride.
In what I'm guessing is a piss take of those Franco
Prosperi Mondo films,
Sordi turns up in Africa in full safari gear, filming the locals,
only to find that he's the weird one and one of the locals is filming
him with a much more expensive camera. Instead, he's soon won over by
the majesty of the African plains (while Blier doesn't seem that
interested at all) and is enjoying the scenery when his white driver
shoots an antelope for no reason. Shortly after, Sordi meets a
tribesman and is overjoyed, saying that they are brothers. However,
he discovers that not every white person has that attitude, starting
with the driver, who soon finds himself fired.
What we have here is a comedy version of Joseph Conrad's Heart of
Darkness (which I've never read - is Marlon Brando in the book too?).
I know this because Sordi specifically mentions reading the book
while travelling through Africa, where our duo meet a Portugese
conman, a bunch of priests who collect butterflies, a ghostly woman
(Erika Blanc) who can seemingly teleport around the place, and a
bunch of mercenaries while following clues that may or may not lead
to Manfredi. They also meet some deeply racist German folk and end up
bonding together over a punch-up.
Sordi's slightly manic and melancholic character carries the film,
but Bernard Blier's understated performance as his long-suffering
sidekick is a brilliant contrast. Add to this immaculate Italian
cinematography and a lush
soundtrack, and you've got a pretty enjoyable film that's
actually funny in places, emotional in others. It is also over two
hours long, which is rather long for a comedy.
The
Woman Behind The Door a.k.a. One
Too Many (1982, Italy, Drama/Thriller, Director: Pino Tosini)
Notable
actors: John Saxon! Dalila Di Lazarro!
This
is a weird and obscure one that's hard to pin down. Is it drama?
Well, it is kind of a two character play, but is it a thriller?
There's a certain amount of tension to the entire film, but then,
could it be a giallo? There's a childhood trauma involved, as well as
a huge villa, dolls, and people playing mind games with each other. I
think we'd better discard trying to pin this one down to a genre and
just say that you get to see John Saxon's arse.
A rich ex-pat stockbroker living in New York (Dalila Di Lazarro from IT
CAN BE DONE...AMIGO
and KINSKI PAGANINI)
has had to travel back to her home country of Italy as she's just
inherited a huge villa from a distant relative. Dalila is kind of
messed up. On the way there, she fantasises about the taxi driver
stopping the cab and trying to rape her (better work on that
imaginary soundtrack Dalila, as that up-beat disco music you've been
conjuring kind of jars with the horrible imagined rape scenes), so we
know that Dalila isn't quite operating on a fully functioning system.
In the town of Orvieto, she meets notary John Saxon, who is there to
do the paperwork to sign over the deeds of Dalila's aunt's house. He
explains that Dalila's Aunt was a recluse, never leaving the villa,
never seeing anyone, just living inside the villa without much
contact with the outside world. Saxon makes the mistake of making a
comment about how he's surprised that Dalila is a stockbroker, as
women are better at spending money than managing it, and this gets
Dalila's back up a bit. However, it doesn't stop her lapsing into a
fantasy involving all the men staring at her in a local cafe.
Things go from the seemingly normal to the weird when Saxon and
Dalila investigate the Aunt's house. Every window is boarded up and
there's no telephone, two issues that immediately come to light when
the front door blows shut, locking the two in the household with no
means to escape. Saxon does what I would do - locate the food and the
booze and settle down for a session, but Dalila instead has
flashbacks to being sexually assaulted in the villa as a kid, but as
the film shows, we have no idea if anything Dalila experiences is
reality or fantasy.
Saxon gets wasted and insists that they both tell each other things
that they wouldn't like others to know, like how Saxon has a hot,
sexy wife that get it on with him or how he has a son who lives free
like a stinking horrible hippy, then tries to get it on with Dalila.
She retreats to her room, and finds some pornographic pictures to
drool over. At this point, Saxon bursts in and ties up Dalila,
producing a gun and shooting her gorily in the wrists...
But that turns out the be another fantasy, as the whole film lapses
into a grey area where no one can be sure that what's happening on
screen is some kind of fantasy of Dalila or not. We never do find out
what is true and what is not (and it may be some kind of inescapable
nightmare of some sort), but we do get some sort of study into
relationships, as the couple trapped in the villa go from hate to
lust to tolerance to love, all while struggling to communicate with
the outside world.
While not exactly rip-roaring, I found this one went down easy due
to the acting of the two leads, and I don't recall John Saxon given
as much space to act out as he does in this film, as he goes from
informal to drunk and lecherous to regretful and angry to love-struck
to resentful husband. He's pretty impressive here. Plus, when he
falls over, his hair didn't move, but that's a subject for another day.
Another weird one from Pino Tosini then.
Wooden
Overcoat a.k.a. Fear
In the City [but not to be confused with Guiseppe Rosati's 1976
film Fear In The City
a.k.a. Hot Stuff] (1981, Italy,
Eurocrime, Director: Gianni Manera)
Notable
actors: Gianni Manera! Fred Williamson! Michel Constantin! Nello
Pazzafini! Numerous Eurocrime muscle!
The
IMDb description of this film covers only the first forty minutes of WOODEN
OVERCOAT. Just like Gianni Manera's odd Crime/Giallo hybrid ORDERS
SIGNED IN WHITE, this film packs in a remarkable amount of
stuff, like Manera just wanted to include everything you get in a
Eurocrime film.
It's all done on the cheap mind you, and one-man film industry
Manera isn't exactly the best director or actor, but I find his films
pretty entertaining. Here he plays Antonio, son of Don Vincenzo,
played by French actor Michel Constantin in 'old man' make-up, and
this seems only be done so Manera can include a five-minute flashback
later in the film. Don Vincenzo is dying and wants to leave New York
to go back to Abruzzo and die in peace, which is a bit of an ask
seeing he's a Mafia Don. The main problem, at least at the start of
the film, is that black gangster Fred Williamson wants to take over
Vincenzo's turf.
Fred is all sass and cigars as usual, and I tip my hat to him
multi-tasking by holding a business meeting and getting a blowjob at
the same time, but don't get too attached to him as the action
switches from New York to Abruzzo. Then Palermo. Then Calabria, and
then Marseilles, then New York again and I think Lisbon then
somewhere in Italy. Basically, Don Vincenzo can't get any peace as
another Godfather has turned on him and he passes his powers on to
Antonio (in a scene that literally looks like he's passing on psychic
powers to Antonio). Manera also throws in a kind of Romeo and Juliet
plot as one of Antonio's brothers gets involved with the daughter of
the bad Godfather guy, and she may or may not be some kind of
Dracula-like reincarnation of a girl Don Vincenzo fell in love with
years ago.
Basically this film is all over the place, but it sure isn't boring,
as the body count goes through the roof and Don Antonio seems
especially keen to kill just about everyone he comes across. In fact,
the film moves so quickly and jumps around so much its hard
keeping tabs on who works for who or even where anyone is supposed to
be at any given time. The randomness factor is quite high too, from a
transvestite hooker who changes his voice mid-sentence to utter this
line: "They found them with Camels stuck in their mouth, and
stuck in their asses too!"
I wish this guy had made more films to be honest. He might look like
a homeless guy has wandered on set and is rambling into the camera,
but his films are unique!
The
Working Class Goes To Heaven
a.k.a. Lulu The Tool (1971, Italy, Drama, Director: Elio Petri)
Notable
actors: Gian Maria Volonte! Plenty of other familiar faces too!
Ennio
Morricone soundtrack!
This
film is both fantasy and complete reality at the same time. Gian
Maria Volonte plays an extremely efficient worker doing piecework in
a factory, not even sure what the parts he produces are used for. At
the same time, Volonte's precise rhythm and total concentration make
him an object of hate among his fellow workers, all of whom are
continually time-managed by snidey supervisors who mostly hide behind
a yellow screen in an observation box. A large hand, index
finger pointing down oppressively, is printed on the wall above
the workers.
Volonte is a good worker but not good at anything else. His son
lives with his ex-wife and fellow worker. He can't get it up for his
girlfriend, and her little boy spends his time totally consumed by
television. Exhausted from working all day, Volonte's only break from
routine is to visit a old colleague who has ended up in an asylum.
Soon enough, Volonte begins to think that what this man is saying is
making sense...
Outside the factory, radical communists screams slogans through
megaphones and clash with the unions as the workers trudge in to
start their shift. Volonte gets to work right away, but his fellow
workers are grinding him down, and a lapse in concentration means
that Volonte loses a finger and his whole world outlook changes.
Be warned, this film has so many scenes of people screaming into
microphones, or crowds of people screaming at each other, that if
you're not careful you'll end up with a headache. I'm guessing that
might be part of intention of the film to a certain extent. With the
loss of the finger Volonte loses his urge to be the best worker and
starts to see how his life in the factory may not be a life at all,
but all those folk screaming about smashing the system or how unity
can get better rights, are they any less self-serving than those in
charge at the factory?
Petri does everything he can to make the factory look like some sort
of prison, continually filming through bars and even doing the same
thing later with a school. Ennio
Morricone's soundtrack also enforces the idea of some kind of
industrial trap where the self is wiped away in place of production.
The film is run down and grey on purpose, but there are a few bits of
Petri's weird visuals here and there - like the strange diagram
Volonte faces while getting psychologically tested.
The main reason for watching this is for Gian Maria Volonte, who
comes across as a guy who isn't that smart, a man who makes an arse
of everything and in losing the only thing he was good at starts
unravelling. In the Italian language version you can hear how fragile
and hysterical Volonte sounds. He seems to mess up just about every
conversation and even when he thinks he's made the wrong choice, it
dawns on him that he's not the only one that's shallow.
Good film this. Nearly two hours long though.
Yesterday,
Today and Tomorrow (1963,
Italy, Comedy, Director: Vittoria De Sica)
Notable
actors: Sofia Loren! Marcello Mastroianni Carlo Croccolo!
Although
the classier Italian films have their many down-points, like not
featuring people having their brains pulled out the back of their
heads, not featuring modified dune buggies battling it out in a
quarry, and not featuring Massimo Vanni, we mustn't neglect them.
Case in point is YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW, which I'm
reviewing for nostalgic purposes.
I first watched this film on Italian television while on holiday
some time ago and was taken in by the anthology aspect of it and the
acting talents of both Sofia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni, who in
all three stories included play a couple of varying closeness and
class. The comedy in the film isn't forced or overly silly either,
like some other comedies produced by Italy. It's more of a snapshot
of the sixties and a much different world.
The first story we get is set in Naples where Sofia Loren is
illegally selling cigarettes on the streets (the act of hooky ciggy
selling is covered well in at least a dozen Mario Merola films), and
Sofia has gotten herself into a lot of trouble. She's been fined for
punting knock-off smokes and refused to pay the fine. She's also
managed to side-step the seizing of her furniture by bailiffs through
hiding it with her neighbours. This results in a warrant being issued
for her arrest. A passing lawyer comments to Sofia's husband,
Marcello Mastroianni, that Sofia is going to get jailed, until he
realises that Sofia is several months into what I call "Irish
Toothache", and there's no way the police can arrest a pregnant
woman and must allow six months after birth for her to nurse the
child. Sofia's plan - getting dropping babies - avoid the barry hole!
However, there's a slight flaw in the plan. Sofia and Marcello
already have three kids, and by the time they get to having seven
kids, Marcello is a burned out husk who can't get a moments peace
because the family share a one bedroom flat (Naples being extremely
densely populated) and he has to look after the kids while Sofia's
out selling boosted snouts. Mastroianni performs this beautifully by
the way - pale, dishevelled, almost insane with exhaustion.
Inevitably, this leads to Marcello not being able to get up and angry
to produce more kids. Sofia gets desperate, but is she desperate
enough to let another man perform 'last hot dog in the tin' as surely
the situation would be down there after seven kids? You'll have to
watch the film to find out. Or not. I couldn't give a fuck either way
to be honest.
What struck me about this segment is that everyone, Everyone, is
really nice to each other. The neighbours, the fellow ciggy punters,
the folks in the prison, even the police. Everyone is nice to each
other in this sequence. Then after watching I'm sucked back into 2020
where everyone seems to have, during lockdown, taken their unbalanced
online personas out into the real world which has resulted in
conflict, raging arguments of political absolutes that no one will
budge from, videos of supermarket customers screaming at staff about
their right not to wear masks, rising racial tensions, lunatics in
charge everywhere that people will follow into oblivion just because
what they preach adheres to that person's world view, and people just
being total cunts to each other. What happened to the human race?
Anyway, the second sequence involves a very rich wife of a business
magnate (Loren) picking up a lover she met the night before
(Mastrioanni). He's a quiet, poetic person who's soft words have
seemingly changed Loren's world view, as before she was an entitled
trophy wife. Now she's an entitled trophy wife driving a Rolls Royce
while talking about how she can give up everything just to be with
Mastrioanni, who looks doubtful from the the outset as Loren spends
her time shunting her Rolls into the car in front of her, nearly
running people over, and generally moaning about money, because she's
never had to do without it. Most remarkable here is the contrast
between how the actors play these characters compared to the first segment.
Third and last part involves high class hooker Loren living in an
apartment on the famous Piazza Navona in Rome (I get the feeling they
underplayed how much this would actually cost). She's a nice girl at
heart and chooses her clients only if she likes them. She has
neighbours who don't approve however. An old Nona and her husband
know the truth about Loren, but their Grandson idolises her and won't
believe she's a prostitute. He's just about the enter the priesthood
and it seems that Loren's presence is putting a spanner in the work.
Mastrioanni's role in this part is playing a politician customer of
Loren who is totally head over heels with her and continually tries
to get her into bed while failing miserably.
This part also contains the most famous part of this film, where
Loren does a striptease for Marcello. Up, periscope! Mind you, it's
Sofia Loren we're talking about here, so don't expect to see
anything. This is a great film that wears its heart on it sleeve.
Acted perfectly. Looking perfect. ETC.
Zappatore
(The Hoer) (1980, Italy, Drama, Director: Alfonso Brescia)
Notable
actors; Mario Merola! Rik Battaglia! Lucio Montanero! Biagio Pelligra!
Mario
Merola gives up the cigarette smuggler/mob boss with a
heart/straight businessman role in Naples and relocates to the
countryside as a humble zappatore (hoer), breaking his back day and
night on the land, with loyal wife by his side. Mario doesn't mind,
as all his money has gone to educating his son. The son in question
is now a fully qualified lawyer, and is all set to head off to the
big city (Naples of course) but not before Mario belts out another
one his songs, as he is won't to do in these films.
After a tearful farewell, Mario settles back into rural life,
complicated by a money lender leaning on him to pay back his debts
and the sinister interests of the local mafia Don (played by a suave
Rik Battalgia). Mario can't pay back the money lender, who seems to
have an ulterior motive, but luckily the local policeman is watching
Mario's back and tells him to avoid the Don at all costs.
Months pass without Mario and his distraught wife hearing from their
son, and Mario dispatches to farm workers to track him down. One of
these is played by Lucio Montanaro, who, if you've watched any of
these films, you've definitely seen. He's the comedy element in this
film, which is kind of needed as most of the film involves people
either weeping, crying madly, or screaming in each other's faces.
When he gets to Naples he finds the son won't talk to him and gets
his sexy assistant to hand him a 100,000 lire note and a blank bit of
paper, which Mario pretends to his increasingly depressed wife is an
apologetic letter from his son.
You see, his son has hooked up with a rich blonde heiress and is
pretending to be a rich land owner orphan from a family of judges.
He's ashamed of his rustic roots, to the point of even pretending his
mother is a mad woman who mistakes him for her dead son. A tsunami of
tears later, Mario's wife is on her death bed, Mario's heading to New
York to get his son back, and the Mafia Don wants that land off of Mario.
My favourite bit in this strangely watchable drama is when Mario
turns up at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel to confront his son. The
reaction of the posh people is so over the top its like Mario walked
in naked, covered from head to toe in shit, rather than looking like
a slightly dishevelled man. The best bit comes just after as Mario
resolves the situation with a loud, sad song about how his son has
abandoned him. Great stuff.
Once again its Merola that makes these films, his overweight,
emotional character is at odds with the usual hard case with a
moustache you get in these films. His humanity once again shines
through. I guess that's why he's so loved in Napoli.