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 at being something more than a Spielberg clone — outside of the way the attacks are filmed and that Ferrer keeps everything a secret so tourists keep coming — make this a movie that I enjoyed on some level. But much like Martino’s post-giallo efforts, I keep wishing for him to go from simply good to flat out amazing. The ideas are there. The execution, however, is not.

You can watch this for yourself on Amazon Prime or get the blu ray from Ronin Flix.

There hasn’t really been a new Christmas tradition since Elf. Well, I don’t know, your family’s traditions may include other films. In our house, we watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (and Black Christmas when the parents go to sleep). Netflix is hoping that this new Santa story will be one you come back to more than a few Christmases from now.

Kate and Teddy Pierce aren’t expecting a good Christmas. Their father died this year, they’ve been drifting apart and Teddy has even gotten into stealing cars. Yeah, for a seasonal movie, this movie gets dark super quick.

When going through old videos, Kate doesn’t just see her parents (the dad is played by Goldie Hawn’s son Oliver Hudson and the mom is Kimberly Williams-Paisley from Father of the Bride), but a glimpse of Santa. The plan to catch the spirit of Christmas in the act turns into an adventure where they have to save the holiday.

Your mileage may vary as to how much you enjoy this, but I was in the right holiday mood to like it. I really enjoyed how Elvis was such a part of Russell’s Santa. After all, Elvis and the actor have been linked throughout their careers. Kurt Russell’s first movie was the Elvis starring It Happened at the World’s Fair. And the actor really turned heads when he became an adult and played the King in the John Carpenter directed 1979 TV movie Elvis. Since then, Russell was the voice of a young Elvis in Forrest Gump and an Elvis dressing thief in 3000 Miles to Graceland. In this movie, Santa sings the Elvis version of “Santa Claus is Back in Town” while he’s in jail, accompanied by Steven Van Zandt’s Disciples of Soul.

There are also some funny inside jokes, as the first name read from the book of naughty and nice, as well as the kid who asks for a snowboard, are both named for Kurt’s grandsons Bing and Ryder.

As silly as the CGI elves were and as expected as the reveal of Mrs. Claus was, I was in a really forgiving mood and enjoyed their antics. What can I say? It’s almost Christmas.

Becca would like to add that many of her friends feel uncomfortable finding Santa so hot. She said they should just enjoy how good he looks.

You can watch this for yourself on Netflix.

Appearing under a variety of titles, like Great White, The Last Jaws, Jaws Returns and L’ultimo Squalo, this movie made $18 million in its first month of U.S. release. Universal Pictures had been trying to block Film Ventures from even releasing the film in America, but the request was denied in U.S. District Court. However, about a month into the film’s run, federal judge David V. Kenyon ruled that it was too similar to Jaws and the film was banned from theaters. Guess what? He was totally right.

After watching a windsurfer surf his little heart out over the opening credits, we get to watch a Great White Shark ruin his fun by eating him. That’s when we make our way to the resort town of Amity — I mean, Port Harbor — where Mayor Larry Vaughn — sorry, I meant to say governor William Wells (Joshua Sinclair, Ice from 1990: The Bronx Warriors) — refuses to believe that a shark is attacking his beach.

That’s when horror writer Peter Benton (James Franciscus, Butterfly and the voice of Jonathan Livingston Seagull ) and shark hunter Ron Hamer (Vic Morrow, who has delighted us in so many movies, such as Message from Space) realize they gotta do something. In my wildest dreams, Hamer’s son will grow up to be the evil Hammer from 1990: The Bronx Warriors, another Morrow role.

The governor refuses to cancel the windsurfing regatta (you gotta regatta!) because he feels like that will hurt his political ambitions. Yes, in the bizarre universe of Italian shark movies, the windsurfing lobby is incredibly powerful. That said, Wells did put in shark nets, but all the splashing around makes the shark nuts, so it tears through the nets. The next day, as the windsurfers line up to compete, the shark appears to the sounds of the guitar from the Torso trailer and treats all these teens on their boards as if I’d treat a sushi buffet. And for dessert, may we recommend the governor’s aide? Mmm.

Benton and Hamer head out to sea with some dynamite, but the shark goes off Spielberg’s shooting script and traps them in a cave. While they’re figuring out why the shark would go into business for itself, Benton’s daughter Jenny (Stefania Girolami Goodwin, who is Ann in 1990: The Bronx Warriors, a radio operator in Moses’ group in Warriors of the Wasteland and would go on to be an assistant director on Empire Records and Super Mario Brothers) and her friends head out on a yacht with some steaks and a shotgun, which seems like the worst plan ever. The shark also stops the boat by using its own body to jam the motor of the boat, which seems patently ridiculous.

Of course, the shark yanks her off the boat and ends up eating her leg, which is done as tastefully as Italian scum cinema will allow. In the hospital, she screams at their father to kill the shark. In an attempt to finally get something right and make it up to Benton — his son was the reason why Benton’s daughter was out there in the first place — Governor Welles grabs more steak (was this movie endorsed by Italy’s beef council, who remind you “Manzo è quello che è per cena”?) and heads out on a helicopter with dynamite to blow up the shark real good. Of course, the shark messes up the best plans and drags the governor into the ocean, biting him in half and dragging his helicopter into the unforgiving ocean. This scene is both astoundingly satisfying and completely stupid, which is what I demand from every movie that I love.

Benton and Hamer try one more time to blow the shark up, because much like pro wrestling, Italian ripoff shark fighting also works in threes. This fails — this shark will not get any memos — and Hamer is killed.

There’s another shark hunter who decides to change the game by using spare ribs (the Italian National Pork Board would like to remind you “carne di maiale l’altra carne bianca”) and chaining them to the dock, but of course the shark won’t listen to reason and decides to drag every single person into the ocean and make a meal of the hunter, a cameraman and assorted rubbernecking beachcombers.

While all these shenanigans are going on, Hamer’s dead body floats on by and Benton (who is wearing a jaunty red wetsuit that seems like it would only enrage a crazed shark further and yes, sharks can see tones of colors depending on their species, I looked this up on Google because I really do care about the facts, dear reader) remembers that he has the detonator, so he blows his friend’s body up and takes the shark’s head with it. He then walks over and punches out a reporter played by Giancarlo Prete, who we all know and love as the hapless Scorpion from Warriors of the Wasteland!

It took four writers — Ramón Bravo (who also wrote Tintorera: Killer Shark), Vincenzo Mannino (who helped write Devil Fish, Miami Golem, Murder Rock and The New York Ripper), Marc Princi and Ugo Tucci — to completely rip off the first two Jaws films. But it only took one director to create this carbon copy carnage. That man was Enzo G. Castellari and if you can’t guess by the related credits of the crew, he’s the man who brought us such magic as 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Warriors of the Wasteland, Escape from the Bronx and the original The Inglorious Bastards. He’s brought me such joy in my life and if IMDB is to be believed, he’s ready to bring even more, as he has a film called The Fourth Horseman in pre-production. This thing has to be a fever dream or a made up story, because it has Sid Haig, Michael Berryman, Bill Mosely, Kane Hodder, Franco Nero (as Keoma!), Fabio Testi, George Hilton and Gianni Garko (as Sartana!) in it. Sometimes, life can surprise you.

No matter what you call it, The Last Shark is anything but boring. You’re not going to see anything you haven’t seen before, but if you want to see b-roll footage, model helicopters and a shark that honestly may be better than Bruce was in the first movie (also it’s a shark smart enough to stop boats and grab ropes in its teeth so it can take out docks full of people), then this is the movie for you.

My only issue with this film: Castellari had not yet met Mark Gregory yet. If Mark was in this movie, I may have lost my mind. I mean, even more than I already have.

You can get this on DVD at Cult Action or watch it on Amazon Prime.

Any movie that starts with a couple taking off their scuba equipment to make love underwater inside sunken ship and then being devoured by a school of mutant flying piranha before a James Bond style graphics sequence is immediately going to rocket to the top of any to watch list there is. Get ready: Pirahanha II: The Spawning is here, it can fly and it will eat your fleshy bits clean off.

Anne Kimbrough (Tricia O’Neil, Are You in the House Alone?) is the diving instructor for the Hotel Elysium. She tells her class to stay out of the ship wreckage, but some people just don’t listen and become more food for those little biters.

Anne wants to see the body, but her police officer ex-husband Steve (Lance Henriksen, who I remarked was young in this movie and Becca said, “He’s never been young. He’s always been…leathery.”) won’t allow it. 

This movie is packed with all manner of horrible folks set up to be victims. For example, Jai (Carola Davis, one of the few people to ever pose for both Playboy and Penthouse, has had a really interesting life, co-writing “Slow Love” with Prince, appearing as Roxie Shield in Mannequin and performing the song “Serious Money” that was the original theme song for BET’s Rap City) and Loretta are sea bandits who dock at the vacation spot to steal food before sailing back out to their doom as they soon learn that yes, piranha can fly.

Marine biologist Tyler Sherman (Steve Marachuk, The Eyes of Laura Mars) keeps trying to get with Anne, so for some reason, she takes him to the morgue. Beyond being a diving instructor, she’s was once a marine biologist so that relationship is a natural. They start taking pictures of the dead bodies, but a nurse kicks them out. This is where we learn another important untrue fact about piranha: they can hide inside dead bodies, then fly across the room and kill nurses.

Anne and Tyler beat feet and then do some horizontal mambo. While he sleeps, she studies the photos and is frightened. It gets worse — her ex-old man finds the credit card and comes back to their old house to throw it at her, get mad she’s getting lucky and accuses her of murder. Like I said before, Piranha II: The Spawning is packed with horrible folks.

Much like all films where man — or woman — battle the terrors of the deep, Anne tries to do the right thing and cancel all dives. Raoul, her manager, fires her in response, so she does the only sane — or insane — thing: try and capture a flying piranha as proof. That’s when Tyler drops a bombshell on her: he’s really a biochemist who was part of a team that developed the ultimate weapon, a genetically modified killer fish that can fly. I guess ultimate weapon may be stretching it, because it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you can unleash in a city or the desert or in cold weather. Man, let’s not bring logic into this. Let’s just go with it: flying piranha are the ultimate weapon.

Can it get worse? Sure it can. The piranha are running out of food and turning on one another, which means they will eat anything and everything they can. Anne tries to reason with the resort manager one more time and her ex is even on her side this time, if only to tell her that Tyler is crazy.

Oh yeah — there’s a fisherman whose son gets killed by the piranha and he tries to get revenge and well, it doesn’t go so well.

Of course, while this is all going on, Raoul decides that the resort should have a midnight grunion catching party because that seems like a fun idea for a singles ready to mingle place. Of course, the piranha attack and absolutely decimate anyone and everyone in their path.

Here’s another untrue piranha fact: they are afraid of daylight. Tyler and Anne decide to chase them back to their coffin, err, their sunken ship and taking a cue from every other undersea monster movie, blow it up real good.

What could make all of this even worse? Well, it turns out that Anne and Steve’s son Chris has snuck around behind their back to work for Captain Dumont, with the hope of getting with his daughter Allison. You guessed it — they’re stranded right in the path of the flying fish.

Luckily, everything works out. Chris and Allison survive, free to hopefully spawn themselves someday soon. Anne and Tyler blow up the sunken ship and take out every single little fishie. And Tyler even has the good sense to get chewed up by the monster fish, allowing Steve to not look like a moron that wrecked his own helicopter for no reason and instead the hero that saved his soon to be not ex-wife.

Here’s yet another untrue fact: this film is the first movie directed by James Cameron. Well, parts of it are. Here’s the true story.

The original director was another graduate of the Roger Corman training school, Miller Drake. His script was all about Kevin McCarthy replaying his character from the first movie, coming back from the dead to create flying piranha and even killing Barbara Steele’s character. Producer Assonitis fired him and replaced him with Cameron, who was originally going to do the special effects.

After the first week of shooting, Cameron learned that he was there strictly to follow Assonitis’ orders. There are claims that he wasn’t allowed to see or edit the footage and even broke into the editing room to create his own cut.

Cameron has said, “He just fired me and took over, which is what he wanted to do when he hired me. It wasn’t until much later that I even figured out what had happened. It was like, “Oh, man, I thought I was doing a good job.” But when I saw what they were cutting together, it was horrible. And then the producer wouldn’t take my name off the picture because [contractually] they couldn’t deliver it with an Italian name.”

Lance Henriksen has also stated that the making of this movie was probably the worst time of his life. There was no budget for his uniform, so he bought a waiter’s outfit for $75 and found some badges, then hand carved a gun handle to at least look like an actual harbor officer.

Cameron’s been quoted as saying that this gets better halfway through if you’re drinking a six-pack at the drive-in. I’ll agree — this is a movie made for a large group of people and a variety of substances. I enjoyed it, but as we all know, I’m not really known for having highbrow tastes.

You can get this on blu ray from Shout! Factory.

Piranha almost never made it to the theater. Universal Studios had considered obtaining an injunction to prevent it from being released, particularly as they had Jaws 2 out that year, but the lawsuit was called off after Steven Spielberg himself gave the film a positive comment (he also called the film the “best of the Jaws ripoffs”).

Joe Dante is my favorite type of filmmaker. Even when you think you know what to expect, he zigs and zags, giving you genuine surprises and fun at every turn.

The action starts with two teens swimming in the waters of an abandoned military base — as you do. Of course, they’re instantly obliterated by an unseen creature.

Skiptracer Maggie McKeown (Heather Menzies, who beyond being the wife of Robert Urich was Louisa Con Trapp in The Sound of Music and even appeared in an August 1973 Playboy pictorial entitled “Tender Trapp”) is looking for those missing teens and she’s hired Paul Grogran (Bradford Dillman, who battled many an ecological horror in Bug, The Swarm and Lords of the Deep) for help. He’s a drunk and surly mountain man, which in the 1970’s makes you a sex symbol.

Why is Grogan so multi-layered? It turns out that Bradford Dillman wasn’t pleased with how flat his character originally was, so he asked writer John Sayles why. The response was that producer Roger Corman never hired good actors, so he rarely wrote nuanced characters. However, Dillman offered Sayles the opportunity to do something deeper, if you’ll pardon the pun.

They discover the abandoned compound where the teens died and discover that it’s a militarized fish hatchery. Maggie drains the outside pool and discovers too late that she’s released Operation: Razorteeth, a strain of piranha made to survive the cold North Vietnamese rivers and win the war in Southeast Asia.

That’s when Grogan realizes that if the local dam is somehow opened, the piranha will attack the Lost River water park and the camp where his daughter is spending the summer. Everybody pays the price for the piranha, like their now crazed creator Dr. Robert Hoak (Kevin McCarthy from Invasion of the Body Snatchers). Soon, the military is involved and our heroes are on the run, trying to warn the media and anyone that will listen that these killer fish are on their way. Nothing will stop them, not even the poison that Colonel Waxman and Dr. Mengers (Barbara Steele!) think will do the job.

Of course, the fish survive and attack the summer camp, wiping out nearly everyone but Suzie thanks to her fear of water. Now, they’re on their way to Buck Gordon’s (Dick Miller, perfect as always) waterpark, where they end up killing Waxman.

Grogan and Maggie come up with a totally ridiculous plan: to use the hazardous waste from the smelting plant to kill off the fish before they spread into the ocean. Our hero, such as he is, must go deep underwater to make this happen and he barely survives, left in a catatonic state at the end of the film.

Dr. Mengers gives the government side of the story, downplaying the danger of the piranha and saying there’s nothing left to fear, but as we see another beach, we now hear the sound of the deadly school of fish.

Beyond Dick Miller, this film features plenty of actors that Dante would work with again and again, like Belinda Balaski, the film’s writer John Sayles and the always welcome Paul Bartel. Plus, Francis Xavier Aloysius James Jeremiah Keenan Wynn shows up, but we all know him better as his stage name, Keenan Wynn. And another Invasion of the Body Snatchers alum, Richard Deacon, is here as well.

Piranha is the rarest of films — one that rises above being a simple ripoff and comes close to eclipsing the source material. It’s quick, bloody and fun as hell, with awesome effects from Phil Tippett and the debuting Rob Bottin, who was only 17 at the time.

You can watch it for free on Amazon Prime or grab it on blu ray from Shout! Factory.

The Florida based director William Grefe has brought many swamp-tinged bits of exploitation goodness — or badness — to the screen, such as Alligator Alley, The Wild Rebels, The Hooked Generation and so many more. As one of the first films made to take advantage of the shark craze in the way of Spielberg’s success, this film’s sympathetic view of sharks as victims is a pretty unique take on the genre.

Marine salvager Sonny Stein (Richard Jaeckel, who pretty much had a one-man war against nature with him battling bats in Chosen Survivors, bears in Grizzly and, well, any and all beasts with a chip on their shoulder in Day of the Animals) is given a medallion that allows him to communicate with sharks. He becomes increasingly disconnected from humanity — easy to do, everyone in this movie is scum — and uses his sharks to take out those who go against his beliefs.

One of those people is an incredibly chubby club owner who is using high-frequency sound to train his sharks, as well as kind of pimping out his wife Karen (Jennifer Bishop, Bigfoot) to get Sonny on their side. Have you ever seen a movie where strippers have been trained to swim with sharks? Who would want to see that? This movie provides the what, if not the why.

Another is a shady shark researcher that murders a shark and her pups. You will stare unbelieving at the screen while Jaeckel overly emotes as he clutches a dead baby shark in his mitts. Oh yeah — Harold “Oddjob” Sakata is also in this.

The stunt footage is pretty amazing and even gets a mention before the movie even begins. Other than the weird premise and a few good scenes, you can nap through most of this and not feel bad. Check it out on Amazon Prime.

Two assassins who couldn’t be more different in age or demeanor have an hour to kill before their next hit — which might pit one against the other. To help pass the time, they share horror stories with one another. Seems like a good set-up and as you know, we sure do love our anthology films.

In the first story, “Valkyrie’s Bunker,” a group of Nazis have made their way to the Hollywood hills to attempt to rebuild their forces. They get destroyed before that can happen, with only one of their number surviving to murder anyone who tries to steal his weed. This story practically flew by before building any real steam, but it had a good start.

In “Assacre,” a totally brutal pepper spells the end of a competitive eating contest.

And in “Hog Hunters,” a bowling team that for some reason acts more like a biker gang attempts to initiate a new member.

They’re all framed by the hitman story, which features way better acting than I’ve come to expect from direct to streaming anthology films. Mel Novak (Game of Death, Samurai Cop 2) shows up as Mr. Kinski, a mob boss, so in the world of genre films, that’s someone’s — yep, I would be that person — idea of a star.

You can find this on Amazon Prime.