Francis Turner (John Saxon, who I will opine is my favorite American actor in a foreign genre film ever) has created a cyborg who is 70% robot and 30% human, Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene from Falcon Crest). He programs him to kill a scientist with plans to cure acid rain (that was a big problem back in the 80’s that, much like killer bees, has just gone away). However, his solution runs afoul of the military/industrial complex that Turner works for. So he must die. And guess who programs him? Donald O’Brien, Doctor Butcher, M.D. himself!

However, Paco still has humanity inside and abandons his mission and sets out to discover more of his past in Arizona. There, he finds love with Linda (Janet Agren, City of the Living Dead, Eaten Alive!) in literally ten or twenty seconds of screen time. And he gets into a feud with Paul Morales (George Eastman!), a redneck trucker who don’t take too kindly to strangers around these parts.

Paul is an arm wrestler, too. It’s no coincidence that Hands of Steel was going to come out at the same time as Over the Top (which according to this article, was filming just 50 miles away).

Then it’s back to the military/industrial complex, who sends a whole bunch of killers after our hero. There are bikers, mafia guys and even a ripoff of Pris from Blade Runner that Paco beats by ripping off her head. Then Paul comes back to try and kill Paco, but our hero literally crushes his head with his cyborg grip.

Paco takes down a helicopter and stops Saxon, who has a giant gun, before cops surround the building ala the Rambo: First Blood. Thinking Linda is dead, Paco has gone crazy, but she survives and is able to talk him into surrendering.

Then, we are gifted with this closing image:

Directed by Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, All the Colors of the Dark, 2019: After the Fall of New York), this movie sadly shows little of the mastery of the form he showed in his giallo work.

Even worse, there’s a tragedy that happened during the filming, as Claudio Cassinelli (Warriors of the Year 2072, Murder Rock) was killed when the helicopter he was in crashed. The rotor blades struck the underside of the bridge and broke off, sending the helicopter into a canyon, where Cassinelli and the pilot died. It wasn’t Martino’s fault, as the National Transportation Safety Board reported that there were prescription drugs in the pilot’s hotel room that would have impaired his judgment. Because John Saxon was a stickler for Screen Actors Guild rules, he shot all of his scenes in Italy and refused to appear in any of the non-union American shot footage. He believes that the SAG saved his life, as otherwise, he would have been on that helicopter.

At least there’s a score by Claudio Simonetti of Goblin to liven things up.

Hands of Stone is a kind of movie we don’t get much of any longer — a movie that found life on the video shelves, a cyborg movie we could rent when Terminator was out of stock. If there’s one compliment I can give this film, the art that sells it is awesome. You can watch it on Amazon Prime and buy it at Diabolik DVD. There’s free copies on You Tube HERE and HERE.

How “f’d” is this movie? We reviewed two more times: As part of the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion Box Set in November 2020 and as part of our Mill Creek Pure Terror Month Box Set in November 2019.

And don’t let the recycling of video box art fool you: Top Line, starring Franco Nero, and Cy-Warrior, starring Henry Silva, are two completely different movies — about renegade cyborgs, natch. Well, they’re almost not the same movie. See for yourself!

There’s a moment where Isla Nublar sinks as a volcano destroys what was once Jurassic World — no real spoiler, the film’s tagline is “The island is gone” — and a brontosaurus stands in the smoke, unable to escape, where real emotion came out of me. It’s like that moment when I was a child, when we went to a Mystery Spot near Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. They had a dino tour that had statues of different creatures and sound effects, acting like they were real and at one point of the tour, encouraged you to shoot at them with fake M16 machine guns. I ran up and down our little train and begged everyone to please stop shooting the dinosaurs.

I have a troubled relationship with Jurassic Park. This film makes the same mistakes as nearly every other in the series. One, never go back to the island. Two, every kindly inventor of the park has a younger successor who only cares about making money and has hired mercenaries who are never there to help. Third, BD Wong is always up to no good.

Yet I found myself really enjoying this movie much more than previous films in the series. Maybe it’s because so many of this iterations set pieces play out more like a horror or disaster movie than a blockbuster, starting with an attempt to retrieve the DNA of Indominus Rex from what is left of Jurassic World, which ends with a spectacular attack by the Mosasaurus.

Throughout the film, the question is often posed — should these creatures live or die? During a Senate hearing, Dr. Ian Malcolm (a welcome Jeff Goldblum) opines that they should go extinct again to make up for the mistakes of John Hammond. Meanwhile, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard) from the last film has started a group to save them. Late in the film, it’s posed that she — by authorizing Idominus Rex in the first place — is just as responsible for where the world is as the bad guys. Malcolm may have said the same if asked — he feels that mankind cannot handle the power of evolution, a trait that holds true to his character in the original film.

Of course, we have to go back to the island. And Claire is lured, just as everyone has been, by the chance to fix her mistakes and save the creatures that are left. She’s contacted by Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), Hammond’s original partner, and asked to help save what’s left of the species on the island. There’s another reason to go back — a chance to see her one-time (twice now?) boyfriend Owen Grady (Chris Pratt, making a very real run for man of summer between this and Infinity War) and rescue his dino daughter, Blue the raptor.

There are secrets, though. Eli Mills, Lockwood’s aide, has a secret agenda. If this seems like a rerun of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, well, it totally is. And if Ken Wheatley (Silence of the Lamb‘s Ted Levine) is the same merc as every other merc in the series, so be it, although his trait of taking teeth from every dinosaur is a neat character tic.

That said, there are some thrilling moments here, such as the aforementioned destruction of the island, an auction where the viewer cannot wait for the chaos that the dinosaurs will eventually cause and a horrific sequence where the new Indoraptor stalks Maisie, Lockwood’s granddaughter (kinda sorta — there’s a reveal here). There’s some fun character interplay between techie Franklin Webb and Dr. Zia Rodriguez, a paleoveterinarian who has never seen a dinosaur for real. And the end — where the question is asked once again if these creatures should live or die — hit all my emotional buttons.

Look — it’s a big dumb summer blockbuster. Sometimes, that’s all you need on a Friday night after a long week of work. Sure, we’ve seen everything before in this series, but the end of this film, which finally takes the dinosaurs away from the park and loose in the world for the final part of this trilogy cycle, sets up something brand new. And that’s actually the most exciting part of this film.

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What if The Shining wasn’t in the snowy hills of Oregon, but instead found itself in Australia? What if a woman found herself repeating the same horrors that her mother had faced twenty years before? And what if we decide to watch Next of Kin, today’s movie of the day?

Linda inherits Montclare, a retirement home that belonged to her mother. When she comes back to her hometown to settle her affairs, she feels unwelcome, with only Barry, an old boyfriend (John Jarratt, the evil Mick Taylor in the Wolf Creek series of movies), being understanding.

Things certainly aren’t helped by Montclare’s staff, including Connie and Dr. Barton (Alex Scott, The Asphyx), who have been conducting a secret affair and may be conspiring to drive Linda insane. Or perhaps the house is truly haunted, as drowned corpses appear at will and windows mysteriously open. No matter what, there’s something wrong and it’s probably due to the years of madness and murder that Linda’s mother has covered up.

There’s an amazing moment near the end where Linda has gone near insane, barricading herself within the diner, where she builds a pyramid of sugar cubes as the forces of evil gather themselves to do her in. It’s strangely gorgeous. And not the only original sight in a film that seemingly would only be a rip-off.

Throw in an amazing score by Tangerine Dream’s Klaus Schulze and you have a film that’s quite worthy of experiencing.

Sadly, there’s been no official U.S. DVD or blu-ray release of the film. You can find it on YouTube and through the gray market. And you totally should. It’s nothing like the poster promises and is instead a psychologically rich trip through past sins and a family curse.

UPDATE: Of course, if one company is going to release an amazing horror movie that has never been out in the U.S. before and do it right, it’s going to be Severin. Their new blu ray of Next of Kin can be ordered now.

It’s been six years since Nick Cooper has recorded an album. He left the UK behind for Los Angeles and his wife, but now, divorce has landed him back home and back behind the mic. Retiring to the English countryside to record what he hopes will be his return to the limelight, he finds himself haunted by screams and visions of death.

Pete Walker’s filmography is filled with sex and murder and little, if any, subtext. From House of Whipchord and Frightmare to Schizo and House of the Long Shadows, which united Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and John Carradine, his films are quickly made and easily digested.

The opening of the film has Gail Cooper (Holly Palance, daughter of Jack and the doomed nanny from The Omen) is going through her ex-husband’s London apartment one more time. She’s not bitter, but almost wistful, remembering their love. Nick isn’t home, but she isn’t alone. Someone is there, watching her answer a reporter about her upcoming divorce and field questions about her husband’s comeback. Moments after she finishes a phone call, someone in an old lady mask kills her in graphic detail, even chopping her hand off. As graphic as this scene is, it gets worse as we return to the scene of the crime multiple times as the camera watches her decompose. And this is one of Walker’s restrained movies!

Gail’s ex-husband Nick (Jack Jones) has no idea that any of this has happened. He’s just trying to get through the recording sessions and make his manager Webster (David Doyle, TV’s Charlie’s Angels) happy. He’s moved into the Surrey countryside where Mr. and Mrs. B (Bill Owen and Sheila Keith, who appeared in four of Walker’s films) take care of his every need. Yet all is not well. At night, he hears screaming and sees visions of his ex-wife’s decaying face. At least he’s hooking up with Webster’s secretary Linda (Pamela Stephenson, an SNL cast member for season 10 of the show, which was the year Lorne Michaels came back, as well as Superman III).

Nick has all sorts of shady people around him, including his right-hand man from the old days, Harry. At one point, Nick ran with a druggy crowd, but now tries to avoid everything, even cigarettes. After discovering that Webster and Linda used to be a couple and the disappearance of Harry, Nick goes crazy. He searches for the voice in the house and only finds Gail’s severed head, which sends him into a catatonic state. He’s admitted to the hospital for exhaustion and they put him into five days of medical sleep (which sounds wonderful).

Nick and Linda finally have sex, but she disappears the next day. This makes Nick even crazier and we start to wonder who is behind all of this. There’s a red herring thrown when we discover Webster likes to dress up as an old woman. He also paid off Gail and got her to divorce our hero.

When Nick goes back to his old apartment, he learns that it’s been cleaned and all the carpeting has been replaced.

As Mrs. B tells him not to worry, the old woman attacks. He ducks an axe blow and the old woman is killed, revealing the killer as her husband! It turns out that their beloved daughter was an obsessed fan who committed suicide once Nick married Gail. All of this psychological torture has been their attempt to drive him to suicide.

Webster and the police arrive, just as Nick discovers that Linda has been walled inside the house, along with the body of the B’s dead daughter, who is clutching a photo of Nick as her body lies in state within a shrine to the singer.

As the police arrest Mr. B, Nick looks to the window of the house and sees his ex-wife waving goodbye to him. It seems that all of the psychological turmoil he had been put through wasn’t all in his head or in the hands of his would-be murderers.

Initially, Walker wanted Bryan Ferry from Roxy Music to play the lead, but Jack Jones chose this as his film debut. A legitimate pop singer who performed nightly concerts while acting daily in this film, he’s probably best known for singing the Love Boat theme song. He’s had a long career with several Grammy awards and acting roles to his name, including Top Secret and American Hustle.

He’s really great in this film, a rare example of a man in peril. This British giallo-style shocker is centered by his performance, as his sanity slowly slips. Also, he has the most chest hair I’ve ever seen on a man, a veritable forest of fluff that freaked out Becca.

Redemption put this film out several years ago and you should be able to find it at an affordable used price. It’s worth looking for. Diabolik DVD has it at a great price, too.

Anthony Cardoza produced some really interesting films. You may call them turkeys. You may also call them…well, you wouldn’t call them works of art. But hey, his movies live on, like The Beast of Yucca Flats, The Hellcats and today’s film, Bigfoot.

Jasper B. Hawks (John Carradine!) and Elmer Briggs (John Mitchum, brother of Robert and the writer of the John Wayne voiced “America, Why I Love Her” that TV stations used to sign off when TV stations still existed and actually signed off) are driving around the forest. And Joi Landis (Joi Lansing, a former MGM contract girl who shows up in the long tracking shot that begins Touch of Evil, in her final role) is a pilot whose plane breaks down. She parachutes into the woods and encounters Bigfoot.

Then there’s Rick (Chris Mitchum, son of Robert and also an actor in films like Jodorowsky’s Tusk and Faceless) and his girlfriend Chris who find a Bigfoot cemetery and get attacked, too.

Of course, the authorities are of no help. Only Jasper will help Rick and that’s because he wants a Bigfoot for his freak show.

Peggy gets kidnapped by Bigfoot and we discover that Joi has been taken, too. Upon reaching the lair of the Bigfoots (Bigfeet?), we discover that the creatures we’ve seen are his wives and the real creature is 200 feet tall. Yes. You just read that right. And he’s about to fight a bear that’s just as huge.

A gang of bikers gas Bigfoot but he escapes the freakshow, goes nuts in town and then gets blown up by bikers. John Carradine quotes from King Kong (he does throughout the film) and the movie ends.

Along the way, we find Doodles Weaver, whose scene in the completely bonkers The Zodiac Killer may be the most ridiculous scene in what is quite honestly one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen.

And hey, is that Bing Crosby’s son Lindsey? Yes, it is! And the first singing cowboy, Ken Maynard! This movie is packed with actors who have much more interesting stories than the film they’re stuck in.

But you know what is interesting? The strange doom funk that plays every time the bikers show up. And keep your eyes open for a quick appearance by Haji, who famously appeared in Russ Meyer’s Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! 

Director Robert F. Slatzer only did two other movies, but one of them was The Hellcats, where Russ Hagen battles a female gang. Leather on the outside…all woman on the inside!

But hey — Bigfoot. Come for the bikers. Stay for the bigfoots. Enjoy the bikinis. But dig this crazy sound, man!

You can get this from Cheezy Flicks for a really great price.

A French surrealistic retelling of Alice in Wonderland with Sylvia Kristel in the lead? It’s as if a message from space was sent directly to my brain, demanding that I stop whatever I was planning and sit inches from my TV and yelling out every translated word via closed captioning.

Alice Caroll is leaving her husband, who she has grown to hate, driving through the countryside until her windshield cracks and she ends up at an old house. It seems she’s been expected and is asked to stay overnight. The next morning, the servants are all gone and her car is fixed, but she can’t find the way out.

She tries to walk away from the house and still can’t escape when a young man tells her to accept her fate. After staying a second night, she finally gets away in her car down the pathway before she crashes her car. As Jason Mantzoukas would say, “This is a Jacob’s Ladder scenario.”

Claude Chabrol — the “French Hitchcock” — dedicated this film to Fritz Lang and it’s a visual essay of Kristel navigating scenery, of the futility of existence, of trying to navigate life’s path without any answers. It’s gorgeous yet icy and mysterious, much like the visage of Chabrol’s muse her, Kristel.

I’d compare this to 1970’s Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, as this is an absolute film, one that you experience on an emotional — and not rational — basis. It’s my first exposure to Chabrol, but I know it will not be my last.

Becca and I have a new rule for movie days. We have so many movies that sometimes, it takes forever for us to choose a film. That’s why we now each pick a movie and we’re not allowed to debate it. I picked Remo Williams. She picked True Crime. No one won.

Mary Giordano (Alicia Silverstone) is a Catholic high school senior whose deceased father was a cop. She loves mysteries and detective magazines (which are seriously some of the creepiest magazines out there since the Apter wrestling magazines stopped featuring apartment wrestling). Now, she’s doing her own detective work, investigating the death of a classmate’s sister.

Detective Jerry Guinn (Pittsburgh’s Bill Nunn, Radio Raheem from Do the Right Thing) is her mentor, trying to keep her away from the dark world of being a cop. However, police cadet Tony Campbell (Kevin Dillon) is too willing to bring her along as they try to find the killer.

This film feels giallo-esque in storyline, if not in tone. There are red herrings galore, plenty of sex, lots of gore, hands being hacked off, carnival freaks…it has a lot going for it. And it squanders it all at every single opportunity. This is a rough film to get through, but one that I hung on and made to the end.

I’d recommend you take whatever running time this film has and use it to better yourself. Have a great meal. Read a book. Learn how to paint. Anything but suffering through this.

What happens when a serial killer expert has to face off with the real thing? That’s what happens when Dr. Helen Hudson (Sigourney Weaver, Alien) is cornered and attacked by a man she profiled, Daryll Lee Cullum (Harry Connick Jr.).

For the next 18 months, Dr. Hudson is a recluse, refusing to leave her computer and high rent apartment, only allowing her friend Andy into her world. A new series of murders — right in her neighborhood — threaten to draw her out. Joining up with Inspector Monahan (Holly Hunter) and Rueben Goetz (Dermot Mulroney), she begins to realize that this killer is copying the world’s worst serial killers.

It also turns out that the killer is following the script she presented on the night that Cullum attacked her. Along the way, Rueben is killed in a police standoff and Monahan has to deal with her feelings of loss.

After her friend Andy is killed like Jeffrey Dahmer, they figure out that the killer is Peter Foley. As the police get to his house, they realize that it was a ruse and he’s kidnapped Helen, placing her back into the same crime scene she was in 18 months before. Will Monahan be able to save her friend? Will Dr. Hudson be able to deal with her crippled agoraphobia?

This is a fine 90’s crime drama, with Connick quite good in his role. Weaver has stated that of all her films, she was most proud of Copycat, as she worked hard to understand how an agoraphobic would behave and she’s regretted that the movie is not better remembered.