The Lock-In and Journey to Hell are earnest movies that want to save your soul. Me? I’m a jerk with a podcast.
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Week 2 (June 28 – July 4) – Dawna Lee Heising: Our beautiful QWEEN
Director and writer Dustin Ferguson has delivered a film that feels less like a motion picture and more like a collection of stitched-together iPhone-shot action and stock footage. Do you like people walking? How do you feel about underwater footage that appears to have been licensed from Pond 5 rather than shot for the production?
As always, Ferguson assembles a bizarre patchwork of performers, including Brinke Stevens as Dr. Charlene Brinkman (Stevens earning her undergraduate degree in biology from San Diego State University before studying marine biology at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, none of which helps her here); Dawna Lee Heising as Pamela; Mel Novak — always — as Robert Clouse Williamson and Raymond Vinsik Williams as the hero who enters the ocean armed with what looks like two plastic hamburger patties to defeat the titular predators. He wakes up; it’s all a dream, but then the city is on fire because of a shark so large it appears in the sky.
Somehow, there’s a sequel. For some reason, I will watch it.
You can watch this on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Jocks was on USA Up All Night on November 3 and 4, 1989; April 7 and November 17 and 24, 1990; June 8 and October 4 and 19, 1991; April 4, May 22, September 12 and October 9, 1992; April 19 and August 3, 1996 and April 4, 1997. Someone at USA liked this movie or maybe they just owned it.
Yes, there are two movies named Jocks. There’s this one — a ripoff of Revenge of the Nerds down to even having Donald Gibb in the cast — and the Italian disco movie. Guess which one I would have rather watched?
Well, anyway, Richard Roundtree is the coach of the wackiest tennis team you’ve ever seen, led by The Kid (Scott Strader, in his last movie), who is the kind of person who would be the villain in any other teen movie. The real star of the team is Jeff (Perry Lang, who became a director).
The team is made up of all manner of madcap characters — can you guess how many Porky’s and Police Academy films and their rip-offs I’ve watched — like Chito (Trinidad Silva), whose entire character is that he’s Mexican and the aforementioned Gibb, who plays Ripper, who is really just Ogre. That said, I don’t think anyone expects Gibb to do anything other than to show up in a sleeveless shirt with iron-on letters and scream unintelligible nonsense at the screen before burping and farting.
Somehow, this maelstrom of a movie catches so many talented people in its wake, like Mariska Hargitay in her third role (she was in Ghoulies and Welcome to 18 before this, but who’s counting?), character actor R.G. Armstrong, Stoney Jackson (that’s right, Phones from Roller Boogie), Tom Shadyac (the director of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective), Katherine Kelly Lang (Evilspeak) and perhaps most improbably, Christopher Lee. Yes, Sir Christopher Lee as a college dean.
Director Steve Carver also made the American parts of The Arena, as well as Big Bad Mama, An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuaid. Roundtree, Armstrong and Lee all did this movie as a favor for him, which is nice, but man, that’s asking so much.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Blade Master was on USA Up All Night on June 15, 1989 and March 3, 1990.
Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to appear in the film, the actor said he couldn’t be in it for moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.
Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame, and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X – Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules – A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman Empire.
This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.
Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter, Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer), to find his student, Ator (O’Keefe).
Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall off my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.
Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.
After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.
Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that.
If you want to see this with riffing, it’s called The Cave Dwellers in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 form. But man, a movie like this doesn’t really even need people talking over it. It was shot without a script to compete with Conan the Destroyer. How awesome is that?
Week 2 (June 28 – July 4) – Dawna Lee Heising: Our beautiful QWEEN
The film wastes no time getting to the action. An earthquake strikes Los Angeles—a scenario we have seen a thousand times—but with a twist: the tremors reveal a prehistoric subterranean ecosystem. Out of this fissure emerges a winged dinosaur — on fire, no less — with a grudge against humanity.
Directed by Dustin Ferguson, who wrote it with Ken May, this is a 60-minute movie and 10 minutes of credits, so it’s not a big time investment for you.
The cast includes Butch Patrick as Mayor Myers; indie streaming queen Dawna Lee Heising as Laurie Myers; Stacey Nelkin from Halloween 3 as Dr.Cochran; Ferguson as a stoner; Mel Novak as Roy Rollin and Ken May as Dick Steel: Bounty Hunter, who has energy blades that might be able to stop a cryptid or whatever this giant bird is and by halfway through the movie, it’s killed Eddie Munster, Dawna and Mel Novak.
Can a monster movie be shot on an iPhone? This movie says yes.
You can watch this on Tubi.
EDITOR’S NOTE: The Great Alligator was on USA Up All Night on April 13, 1990.
Sergio Martino directed some of my favorite films of all time, such as The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, 2019: After the Fall of New York, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key as well other completely out there films like Hands of Steel, Torso, American Tiger, The Mountain of the Cannibal God and The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail. Throw in a script co-written by one of my favorite Italian scuzzfest actors and directors, George Eastman, and you have the recipe for a movie that should blow my mind.
The Great Alligator should be, well, great. And there are moments where it feels like it’s going to be, as it attempts to be a mash-up of Jaws and Cannibal Holocaust, which again, seems like a great idea. Throw in the gorgeous Barbara Bach before she married Ringo Starr, Claudio Cassinelli (Murder Rock) and Mel Ferrer — who went from the A-list and marrying Audrey Hepburn to appearing in some of the most crazed films, like The Visitor, Nightmare City and Eaten Alive! to name but three — and you have a cast ready to make it happen. And the central theme of the movie — tourists anger the god of a resort island who then becomes a giant alligator and eats them all — is great, too.
Turns out that Kuma, that river god, doesn’t like how Mel Ferrer runs Paradise House and wants none of his native people to work with the whites any longer. The natives then wipe out anyone that works there, no matter where they come from, and Cassinelli and Bach must climb the waterfall that Stacy Keach fell off of in The Mountain of the Cannibal God to find the only person who may be able to save them, Prophet Jameson (Dr. Menard from Zombi 2).
That said, once the face-painted natives and a giant alligator attack everyone, burning down Paradise House and menacing screaming tourists, who survives and what will be left of them is up for grabs. Look for appearances by Bobby Rhodes (the pimp from Demons), Romano Puppo (Trash’s father from Escape from the Bronx) and Sylvia Collatina (Mae Freudenstein, the ghost girl of The House by the Cemetery)!
The huge body count, numerous alligator attacks and attempts to be something more than a Spielberg clone — aside from the way the attacks are filmed and Ferrer keeping everything a secret so tourists keep coming — make this a movie I enjoyed on some level. But much like Martino’s post-giallo efforts, I keep wishing he’d go from simply good to flat-out amazing. The ideas are there. The execution, however, is not.
Also known as Bruce’s Revenge, Return of Fists of Fury , and Ninja vs. Bruce Lee, this was made under the title Zhong lie Jing Wu Men. It’s superstars — that’s what they said — Bruce Le as Bruce Wong, who comes to Manila to visit his uncle, who has apparently forgotten and just left home. So he wanders the streets and meets a young thief named Piggy and saves a girl from the deadliest pimp in the Philippines, Mr. Cross.
One of the women Bruce saves is his cousin, who runs a martial arts school with his other cousin. He helps them fight Mr. Cross, who has one henchman who is such a gay stereotype that even far-right people will be offended by this movie’s homophobia. Anyway, Bruce shuts almost everything down, so the bad guys hire a killer named Sakata to kill everyone, starting with his male cousin.
This movie features an instrumental version of Barry Manilow’s “Mandy” that completely made me insane, with me screaming out the lyrics. “I’m standing on the edge of time, I’ve walked away when love was mine, Caught up in a world of uphill climbing, the tears are in my mind, and nothing is rhyming.”
Also: This ends with the police all coming to bust up the final fight between Mr. Cross, Sakta, Sakata’s brother, a hundred goons and Bruce. Piggy watches, all alone on the beach, crying, realizing that he will forever be alone. So…an unhappy ending?
If you were Asian, did martial arts and looked like Bruce Lee with aviator sunglasses on, you always had a job in 1977.
Director Joseph Velasco also went by Joseph Kong and made Bruce’s Secret Kung Fu. Thundering Ninja, The Clones of Bruce Lee, Treasure of Bruce Lee, The Young Dragon, Enter the Game of Death, Bruce’s Deadly Fingers, Bruce and the Shaolin Bronzemen and Kung Fu Master: Bruce Lee Style. He made more off Bruce Lee than Bruce Lee made off of Bruce Lee.
When you pair the steely gaze of Franco Nero with the unhinged, lip-smacking energy of Telly Savalas, you expect a certain level of Euro-crime carnage. Redneck, known in its native Italy as Senza ragione, delivers that in spades, though it’s a strange, disjointed beast that feels like two different movies glued together by a madman who loves sleaze.
The premise is pure, high-octane 70s trash: Memphis (Savalas, channeling maximum camp) and his partner Mosquito (Nero) botch a jewelry store heist. While fleeing the scene, they carjack a vehicle, only to realize they’ve accidentally kidnapped Lennox Duncan, the 13-year-old son of a British consul. Naturally, this brat becomes their passport out of the country. He’s played by Mark Lester. Yes, the star of Oliver and the man who was a close, long-time friend of Michael Jackson. They were godfathers to each other’s children, and he has claimed to have donated sperm to Jackson, saying that Paris Jackson could be his daughter. Is that the strangest thing that happened in his life? Or would it be when a drunken Oliver Reed brought a prostitute for him for his 18th birthday?
But back to the movie, which is an unpredictable road film that shifts from a gritty crime thriller to a weirdly meditative, occasionally uncomfortable character study of an impressionable kid dragged into a world of violence.
The film starts strong with a frantic, albeit poorly planned, robbery and a classic Italian car chase. However, once the dust settles and the trio hits the road, the pacing hits a wall. Memphis descends into genuine, teeth-grinding insanity, while Mosquito, who is supposed to be the Lennie to Memphis’ George, somehow ends up being the surrogate father figure for young Lennox.
The movie’s middle act is where things get truly bizarre. There’s a strange, unsettling bond that forms between the kidnappers and the kid, culminating in a sequence where the boy watches Mosquito shave that has sparked decades of “Is he looking at the butt?” debate on the internet. It’s exactly the kind of sleazy, confusing Euro-cinema moment that makes me keep watching these movies. And yes, I may be straight, but when Franco Nero bares his ass, you look.
Savalas is clearly having the time of his life, but he leans so heavily into the camp that his incessant whistling and twitchy mannerisms threaten to swallow the entire movie whole. If you love him, he’s going to push you to hate him, between assaulting and murdering Maria (Ely Galleani), shooting a child, forcing Nero to wear her tiger stripe robe, murdering a dog and then killing an entire family of Germans by pushing their mobile home into a river.
By the way, the girl in that family is played by Lara Wendel, who would be chased by a dog and horribly murdered in Tenebre; she’s also in The Red Monks, Killing Birds, My Dear Killer, The Perfume of the Lady In Black, Ghosthouse, and You’ll Die at Midnight. In my world, that’s what we call a killer resume. Her father was Walter Barnes, a former football player who was a sheriff in High Plains Drifter, Bronco Billy and Smokey Bites the Dust, as well as one of the rangers in Day of the Animals. Her mother and brother also appear in this and are killed by Telly.
Why is Telly — a Greek-American born in Long Island — playing an American Southerner who speaks jive? Who thought having a teenage boy watch a naked Franco Nero and then examining his own naked body was a good idea? How many taboos is this movie ready to shoot in the face?
Maybe it was director Silvio Narizzano, who was born in Quebec and started his career in Toronto-based television before directing movies like Die! Die! My Darling!, Georgy Girl and the insane Carroll Baker and Denis Hopper-starring Bloodbath. Or perhaps it was writers Win Wells, who was also behind The Greek Tycoon, and Masolino D’Amico, a writer on Olivia Hussey’s Romeo and Juliet, as well as Caligula and the Cannon version of Otello.
Anyways, Lester’s father Michael, must have made some contacts in Italy, as he would go on to write and produce Antonio Margheriti’s Codename: Wild Geese.
What a weird movie.
You can watch this on YouTube.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Yeti Giant of the 20th Century was on USA Up All Night on December 8, 1989.
Somewhere deep in the middle of the Canadian mountains, Professor Wassermann (played by John Stacy and voiced by Gregory Snegoff, who was Scott Bernard on Robotech and Golgo 13 in the translated American version of his cartoon) is looking for a giant iceberg that has a yeti (Mimmo Crao, the only actor that I know that is in a Jesus movie — Jesus of Nazareth — and an Edwige Fenech sex comedy — Sex With a Smile — and this monster movie).
Morgan Hunnicut (Eddie Faye, who is really Edoardo Faieta from Plot of Fear and also voiced by Snegoff) owns a multinational oil company that funds the expedition to study him, but he really wants to exploit the Yeti. He’s also brought along his orphaned grandchildren for some reason — what, a Fortune Six company doesn’t have daycare for their CEOs? — named Jane (Phoenix Grant*, AKA Antonella Interlenghi, Emily from City of the Living Dead) and Herbie (Jim Sullivan), who had been mute since the death of his parents and only communicates with his dog Indio.
There’s an astounding scene where the Yeti is fitted into what is basically a giant telephone booth and airlifted by helicopter to a height of 10,000 feet because the air up there is what he’s used to and it’ll be easier to thaw him out up there. This is bonkers Italian cinema science at its finest, dear reader.
The paparazzi wants to see more of the Yeti and surrounds everyone, freaking him out as if he were in a Dino De Laurentiis movie from 1976 and sending him running with Jane, Emily and Indio in his hand. He gets so excited by Jane rubbing against his paw — and I’m not making this up — that he gets erect nipples. Later, as he combs her hair with a giant fishbone — again, not making anything up — they are found by the professor, who claims that she has been adopted as his wife and Herbie as his son. Cliff Chandler (Tony Kendall**, AKA Luciano Stella, AKA Kommisar X!) is one of the company men who comes to their rescue, and he comments that she’ll have to put out soon for the ape man.
Speaking of putting out, the Yeti has been marked much like Kong was after Dino’s remake. You can find Yeti shirts that say “Kiss Me Yeti” — a phrase that makes no sense — and a disco song and a commercial for the gas stations that ask you to put a Yeti instead of a tiger in your tank.
Then things get bad when the new leader of Hunnicut turns out to be the evil Cliff. He decides to kill anyone connected with the big lug.
How bad do things get?
The kind of bad where autistic children are threatened, Yetis break free over the Niagara Falls, where old kindly professors are killed by Aldo Canti, who was once Angel the acrobat from Return of Sabata and even cute dogs get stabbed.
Somehow, however, Indoo shrugs off this 1d4 slashing damage and survives to come running across the field like Wuthering Heights at the end as the Yeti goes back home to the frozen Canadian tundra, leaving behind nothing but death, destruction and flipped-over toy vehicles with dead industrialists trapped inside.
Oh yeah, and Dr. Butcher himself, Donald O’Brien, is in this!
A lot of folks hate on this movie for really poor reasons. This is the very best kind of trash, a movie blessed with great poster art and the worst in special effects. These people are morons who don’t understand the wonder of a film that has high-budget dreams and basement-budget realities.
Writer Mario di Nardo also wrote another astonishing film, the revenge picture by way of slasher-grossout Ricco AKA Cauldron of Death, as well as one of the best giallo films ever, The Fifth Cord and Five Dolls for an August Moon. He was joined by Marcello Coscia on the screenplay, who also wrote Mission Bloody Mary, A Quiet Place to Kill, When Women Lost Their Tails, The Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue and Tex and the Lords of the Deep. There was some talent here, at least in the script.
Director Gianfranco Parolini went from writing peplum films to the scripts for all three Sabata movies and God’s Gun. His directing resume has some decent stuff on it as well, including several of the Kommisar X films, If You Meet Sartana…Pray for Your Death and The Fury of Hercules. He also produced this film. Again, he had a record of producing solid work, but I think they shot too high and paid the price.
And by paid the price, I mean made a movie that completely entertained me for its entire running time.
*According to Wikipedia, Jessica Harper (yes, from Suspiria) is the voice of Jane. This seems way too good to be true.
**Kendall and O’Brien are dubbed by Ted Rusoff, the son of screenwriter Lou Rusoff and nephew of B-movie titan Samuel Z. Arkoff. ** He relocated to Italy to dub movies — where he met and married Carolyn De Fonseca — and you can hear his voice in movies like Voyage Into Space, Deep Red and The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh.
You can watch this on Tubi.
Also known as Soul Soldier, Black Cavalry and Buffalo Soldier, this John “Bud” Cardos-directed movie is about Eli Brown (Robert DoQui), who escapes all the trouble his sex life gets him into by joining the 10th Cavalry at Fort Davis, which is led by Col. Grierson (Cesar Romero, who we all know from Gilbert Gottfried liked having oranges thrown at his butt).
Soon, Eli befriends Native American Walking Horse (Robert Dix) and plans to settle down with Julie Brown (Janee Michelle). However, her affections are divided, as she is also attracted to Sgt. Hatch (Lincoln Kilpatrick), creating a complex love triangle that drives the story.
Here’s what’s wild: After this was filmed on 16mm and released under the title The Red, White and Black, producer Stuart Hirschman asked John Cardos to salvage the film. Cardos, after looking at the existing footage, said it needed to be reshot at 35mm and got away with it. This feels like absolute BS, but Wikipedia says it was released in 1970 and 1972.
Barbara Hale, Della Street on Perry Mason and Dr. Jenny Lager in The Giant Spider Invasion, shows up, as does Louise Jefferson herself, Isabel Sanford.
You can watch this on YouTube.
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