Today is the 138th anniversary of the founding of Antonio Bay, CA.  I see no better time to tell you about one of my favorite movies, which comes from that fictional town.

As the town is about to celebrate its 100th anniversary, the stroke of midnight brings chaos. It all starts with an old sailor (John Houseman, in a scene shot after the initial filming was done to add more of an overall scary feel) freaking some kids out with the tale of the Elizabeth Dane. At the same time, Father Malone (Hal Holbrook, adding some star power) drunkenly finds his grandfather’s diary from a century ago, when the founders of the town deliberately sank and plundered a ship full of lepers in order to build the town and the church.

Things get even crazier when a fog rolls in, bringing back the ghost of the Elizabeth Dane and its crew members, who kill the entire ship full of men. And then there’s Nick Castle (Tom Atkins!), who finds a young hitchhiker named Elizabeth Solley (Jamie Lee Curtis!). And oh yeah, DJ Stevie Wayne (Adrienne Barbeau!) is given a piece of the Elizabeth Dane by her son. The entire town flips out overnight, with windows breaking, car alarms going off and dogs barking at the sea.

It doesn’t get any better the next day. The driftwood that Stevie was given mysteriously changes words from DANE to 6 MUST DIE and leaks all over her equipment, making a tape player read part of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”  Nick and Elizabeth seek out his missing fishermen friend and find the body of Nick Baxter with his eyes torn out. It gets worse. The corpse gets off a table and tries to attack her before carving out the number 3. And Kathy Williams (Jamie Lee’s mom Janet Leigh!) chooses to ignore the priest’s warnings that everyone is doomed while worrying about her husband being lost at sea.

Local weatherman Dan (Charles Cyphers from Halloween) has been flirting with Stevie the whole time, but he gets attacked by the fog in a scene that feels like it was lit by Mario Bava. And the fog rolls toward her and her home, where Nick saves her son at the last minute. Finally, the crew of the Elizabeth Dane comes into the town’s church, seeking the gold cross made from their stolen riches. Blake (special effects master Rob Bottin), their leader, grabs it as the crew disappears.

At the end, the priest wonders why they didn’t take him when they promised to kill six. He doesn’t wonder long as the fog rolls back in and he’s beheaded.

This was the first movie Carpenter would direct after Halloween and was inspired by The Trollenberg Terror, a movie where monsters hid in the cloud. It also had a real-life moment that spurred it forward — when promoting Assault on Precinct 13 with his then-girlfriend, producer Debra Hill, Carpenter noticed a strange fog move quickly past Stonehenge.

This was part one of Carpenter’s two-picture deal with AVCO-Embassy (Escape from New York would be the next movie) and was a low budget film with a $1 million dollar budget. That said, Carpenter and Dean Cundey shot it in the anamorphic 2.35:1 format, so it looks amazing. The scenery b-roll that plays as the fog grows closer looks otherworldly and anywhere but California. It’s gorgeous. 

After viewing the rough cut, Carpenter felt that the film was terrible and didn’t work. He added the campfire scene at the beginning and several new scenes while reshooting others to be more horror and gore-filled. The budget only went up $100,000, but nearly one-third of the film was reshot.

The Fog is packed with references to other films. Charles Cyphers’ character is named for screenwriter Dan O’Bannon, who made Dark Star with Carpenter. Tom Atkins’ character, Nick Castle, is named for the actor who played Michael Myers in Halloween (he’d later co-write Escape from New York and direct The Last Starfighter), the babysitter’s name is taken from Richard Kobritz, the producer of Carpenter’s TV movie Someone’s Watching Me! And George “Buck” Flower plays Tommy Wallace, named for Carpenter’s art director and the future director of Halloween 3: Season of the Witch and the original It TV movie.

There’s more! John Houseman’s character is named after horror writer Arthur Machen, an Arkham Reef is mentioned as a shoutout to Lovecraft and the town’s coroner is Dr. Phibes. Bodega Bay, the setting of The Birds, is also mentioned.

There’s some great acting in here, particularly the speech Atkins gives about his father almost dying on the ocean. And Barbeau is great as she channels famous New York City DJ Alison Steele, The Nightbird. And Carpenter is in the film as the assistant Bennett who is named after a friend from USC, Bennett Tramer. If that name sounds familiar, Carpenter also used it for Laurie Strode’s potential love interest (and victim of mistaken identity in Halloween 2) Ben Tramer in Halloween. Even Stevie’s car is a reference to another film Carpenter loves: it’s a Volkswagen Thing (her last line, “Look for the fog,” echoes the last line in that movie’s “Watch the skies”).

At one point, John Carpenter mentioned creating an anthology series for TV that would have The Fog create supernatural events in other cities before connective ties to the original film would be shown. Sadly, this series never happened and in 2005, a remake was produced. The less said about that, the better.

Looking for a copy? You mean you don’t already own this? You can grab the limited edition steelbook from Shout! Factory or watch it on Shudder. It’s better than any horror movie that’ll come out this year. Maybe even any year.

Feed Shark

The spaghetti western heroes Django, Trinity, Sabata, Ringo and Sartana all fell victim to the strange copyright laws of Italy, where sequels to films just happen (such as how Bruno Mattei’s Cruel Jaws was also shown as Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws). There are several non-cannon Sartana films, including Sartana Does Not Forgive, Shadow of Sartana… Shadow of your Death, Sartana in the Valley of Death, Trinity and Sartana… Those Dirty S.O.B.s and Alleluja & Sartana Are Sons… Sons of God. But today, we’re here to discuss the fake Sartana crossing over with the fake Django. Confused yet?

Sheriff Ronson (Fabio Testi, who lived with Ursula Andress and had a son with Edwige Fenech, so I regard him with some measure of respect and jealousy) is a newcomer to Black City. He learns that Willer, Sanchez and their men are the law in town. But now Django (Hunt Powers, who is now known as Jack Betts,. He started his career in spaghetti westerns before becoming an American character actor) is here, ready to settle an old score with the bad guys.

So where’s Sartana? Well, at the end of the movie, the Ronson tells Django that around some parts, that’s what they call him. No, no they don’t. I know Sartana, sir. I have watched his movies. And you are no Sartana.

This film is directed by Demofilo Fidani, who some call the “Ed Wood of spaghetti westerns” as he often used more well-known character names in his films and has absolutely no regard for continuity. He directed mostly westerns, although he did create a giallo in 1972, A.A.A. Masseuse, Good-Looking, Offers Her Services.

There’s one good gunfight and not much else happens, to be honest. If you’re watching this and are excited to see inventive weapons and a weird sense of humor — like the other Sartana films — you are bound to find this entry lacking.

There are two other crossover films, Django and Sartana Are Coming… It’s the End with Hunt Powers as Sartana and Django Defies Sartana, where George Ardisson (Agent 3S3!) plays the role. In his later years, he became well known as a spirit medium!

Wild East released this as a double disk with Dead Men Don’t Make Shadows, but it is out of print. You can also watch this on Amazon Prime.

Don’t forget! Arrow Video is putting out an entire boxed set of Sartana soon and it’s limited to 2500 copies! You can get yours at Diabolik DVD.

In the third of the five original Sartana films, our hero gains a new actor: George Hilton takes over for Gianni Garko with Giuliano Carnimeo staying in the director’s chair. In this installment, Sartana faces Mexican bandits and Sabbath, a man who may be his equal.

Hilton was in a ton of films. Of note, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Bloody Iris, All the Colors of the Dark have been covered on our site. According to spaghetti-western.net, “Carnimeo discovered that Hilton fitted his ideas better than Garko: he had always been a supporter of a more parodist approach, but his plans had been obstructed by Garko, who felt that the daring mix of comedy and extreme violence of the movies would only work within a tongue-in-cheek context, and would become ridiculous if they turned the whole thing into a farce. Hilton agreed with a more fanciful approach. As a result, the Hilton-movie shows a strong tendency towards the absurd. For this reason, some fans don’t see it as an official Sartana.”

Although they didn’t team up on this Sartana film, Carnimeo and Garko also did They Call Him Cemetery and His Name Was Holy Ghost, which are quite similar to the Sartana films. In addition, Carnimeo and Hilton did two films with a hero called Halleluja and two more with a hero called Tresette which take off from Hilton’s role in this film but are played for comedy.

Of course, Sartana comes up against criminals who are all out for themselves. However, the wild card in this movie comes in the form of Sabbath (Charles Southwood), a bounty hunter who dresses in white, carries a parasol, reads Shakespeare and has promised his mother that he will be on his best behavior.

There are — did you catch the theme yet — plenty of double crosses. Even on you, the viewer, with somewhat of a trick ending. While many decry this entry, I found it quite entertaining. You can find it on the gray market and on a few compilation DVDs of varying quality. Or you know…YouTube.

Sometimes, I just sit and search through YouTube looking for a movie to watch while I work. Often, that search finds horrible films that I wouldn’t be able to enjoy if I were truly paying attention to them. And sometimes, like with this movie, I end up taking a break from writing and find something I really enjoy.

Directed by Peter Sasdy (The Lonely Lady, Taste the Blood of Dracula, Hands of the Ripper), this film was a UK/Canadian tax shelter affair. But don’t hold that against it! Five strangers all wake up at the same time and have no memories of who they are, other than that they are all killers. They must travel to a Wild West town called Blood City.

Once there, they will spend a year in servitude before they can become free. Then, they’ll be able to own a business and work toward becoming immortal — free from constant worry of challenges to the death. They get there by winning twenty challenges. And there’s only one law in Blood City — Frendlander, played by Jack Palance. It’s no accident that the bad guy from Shane is playing this part. Palance might only be known to younger folks from his Oscar turn in City Slickers, but in the 1970’s he was taking whatever parts he could get. And then he’d sink his teeth into them! He’s fabulous in this movie!

Keir Dullea (Black Christmas, 2001, The Haunting of Julia) stars as Lewis, who finds himself coming up against Frendlander over and over again. The real secret of the film? None of them are in this town at all — it’s a virtual reality simulation to determine the best warriors in a future war. So basically, it’s a combination of WestWorld and The Matrix.

Samanta Eggar (The Brood) shows up as a scientist who falls in love with Lewis and inserts herself into the virtual reality experiment. Barry Morse is also in here, who you may remember as Lt. Philip Gerard from TV’s The Fugitive. And Chris Wiggins is in this as well. He was Jack Marshak on Friday the 13th: The Series.

If you’re looking for this movie, you can find a horrible transfer of it on the Mill Creek Sci-Fi Invasion 50 Pack. That said, the set is pretty worthwhile, as you also get stuff like The Crater Lake Monster, Death Machines, Sergio Martino’s Hands of Steel, Horror High, the Florinda Bolkan film Le Orme, The Raiders of Atlantis, R.O.T.O.R., Robo Vampire, one of the worst/best films ever Rocket Attack U.S.A. and more.

This is totally of the doomed 1970’s genre and the end — where Lewis chooses the fantasy of Blood City instead of the lies of modern life — still ring true today. I completely expected a ripoff of WestWorld and FutureWorld, yet was rewarded with something really good. It’s slow moving, but if you understand that and can see a movie for what it could be versus what it is, I think you’ll enjoy it.

In his very first line in the movie, Sartana paraphrases the Bible verse “I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent” before killing a corrupt sheriff and two of his deputies. If I wasn’t already excited about the fourth Sartana film, I’m now fully ready.

Sartana turns himself in for their murders in order to get one of his old friends, Grandville Full, out of the corrupt jail, one so horrible that the wardens urinate onto men desperate for water. That friend I mentioned earlier — Grand Full for short — knows where a half million in gold and two million in counterfeit money is. But there are plenty of people after it too, like an evil widow (Nieves Navarro!), a one-eyed killer, another corrupt lawman and even a general gone deaf and mad.

Like every Sartana movie, the only person you can trust is Sartana himself. The entire town of Mansfield is looking for the gold and ready to kill one another and anyone else that comes to visit. Like Mara Krupp, who pretty much plays the same horny hotel owner that she played in For a Few Dollars More.

Well, maybe Pon Pon, an old friend and inventor, can be trusted. After all, he’s invented a robot for Sartana named Alfie. Yep, in the middle of a spaghetti western, there’s a robot. Welcome to the Sartana films! He’s also building a giant organ for his dance hall, which he claims to be the reason why he needs the money.

The scene where Alfie the robot blows up the sheriff, spraying out burning counterfeit money that Sartana lights a cigarette with while laughing? That’s exactly why I love the Sartana series. They’ve moved from him as an angel of death to a detective with James Bond gadgets over the four Gianni Garko films.

The finale, where the pipe organ is taken into the street, only for it to contain machine guns that mow down hundreds — if not more — soldiers and assorted killers, thieves and liars has to be seen to be believed.

The music, by Bruno Nicolai, is great. He also scored plenty of Jess Franco films, as well as The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, All the Colors of the Dark, The Case of the Bloody Iris and so many more. Here, he continually brings back the haunting theme of Sartana and ups the intensity at the close of the film.

Of the four Sartana films I’ve watched for this week, this one has been my favorite. Now, it’s not the dark and realistic film that a Leone Western can be, but it has a charm and verve all its own. Also, I want a robot that lights my cigars like Alfie!

Deadly playing cards. A Confucius quoting casino owner. And every man and woman out for themselves. Yep, it’s time for another Sartana movie.

Sartana (the returning Gianni Garko) sees several gold prospectors get killed, then kills their killers. Soon, he meets Abigail Benson (Daniela Giordano, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key), who has paperwork claiming she owns a parcel of land. Everyone tries to get her to sell the land — which is said to be worthless — and she even gets kidnapped by Hoffman, an evil banker. But, of course, this being a Sartana movie, nothing is as it seems.

The second Sartana film to be directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (The Case of the Bloody Iris), filled with plenty of action and great lines, like when Sartana tells a gang of men that he will “pray for them before he sends them to hell.” Or when he informs a gunman that “You don’t want to kill me, because I don’t allow myself to get killed.”

There are some sillier sequences, but Sartana has not become fully camp. That would come soon enough. This is closer to a cowboy procedural drama and a pretty interesting one at that.

You remember that interview where Vanilla Ice tried to explain why he didn’t steal Queen/David Bowie’s “Under Pressure?”

I’d like to hear whoever did the music for this movie to explain how they added a “da na na” to the theme from Halloween. Then again, there’s plenty more that this movie owes to that film.

A killer with a kitchen knife is on the prowl, killing off college kids. And he’s on the way to Lanier College during finals.

Meanwhile, a fraternity stages a mass shooting to help their members pass a chemistry test. How does this plan work? Who comes up with such a plan?

While students prepare for the end of the year, the killer is hiding among them. We have Courtney, who is the Final Girl, of course. Her roommate is Lisa, who is all into the hot professor. Well, not really hot. He’s a professor, though.

For some reason, all of the pledges can’t dare anyone. But Gary is in love with Janet and pins her, so he gets punished by being tied up to a tree, his underwear filled with ice and then sprayed with shaving cream. What? Where did this ritual come from? Who goes through with this? Even the rest of the town, like the security guard, follow these rules. What is the deal with this school?

Well, he’s tied up and the killer gets him. Then it gets his girlfriend, too. While that’s going on, Wildman, a frat guy, is looking for pain pills when he gets killed by a Universal weight machine. His friend Mark tries to find him and he gets killed.

Then we have Radish, who isn’t gay in the movie but would totally be a proud out character if this was made after 1981. He’s constantly looking for killers and has a great poster collection of old films. All his knowledge of murder doesn’t help, as he’s instantly killed.

Lisa tries to model for her boyfriend in the nude, but she gets killed, too. And now we’re down to one and the killer even catches an arrow and stabs the coach with it when he tries to save Courtney. But then he falls into a hole and she stabs him to death. That’s it. That’s the fight he puts up.

Written and directed by Jimmy Huston (My Best Friend Is a Vampire), this is pretty much Halloween with a killer who was too lazy to get a mask (he was also the fight coordinator for the film).

That said, I wasn’t bored, I laughed out loud at many of the things that Radish did and said, and I enjoyed the arrow catching scene. If you want to see it for yourself, Shout! Factory has released it on blu-ray and you can also watch it for free on Amazon Prime. You’ll be filled with questions. Like, how much chaffing did the short shorts of the 80’s cause?

A man who looks just like Sartana robs what has been — up until now — impossible to steal from. Now, bounty hunters are trying to cash in on the bounty on our hero’s head.

Giuliano Carnimeo (The Case of the Bloody Iris, Exterminators of the Year 3000) takes over the directorial reigns from Gianfranco Parolini with this film.

Sartana becomes less of an angel of death and more of a magician here. Yet he still seems supernatural. Surely he’s been shot so many times that only a dead man can survive having that much hot lead pumped into him!

The movie takes places in Poker Falls, a town devoted to gambling, and the bank robbed at the beginning actually has a gang of killers that seek out potential thieves and kill them before they get the chance to try to take money from them. Throw in Klaus Kinski as a card shark named Hot Dead and you have quite the pickle for Sartana!

This is the only film where Sartana has Buddy Ben as his assistant. Also known as Sartana the Gravedigger, this one didn’t grab me as much as the original. It’s certainly anything but boring, but I really liked the darker tone of the first one. Also, the theme music seems to reference “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” but in a Western banjo way, which seems quite odd to me!

The beauty of Predator is that it starts as a war movie and suddenly becomes a slasher before you even realize it. It subverts the macho tropes of Arnold movies by inserting a killing machine that is tougher, better armed and just plain unstoppable. And that killer? He’s just here for sport.

So why do I love Predator 2 so much? Because it’s literally a grindhouse or Italian exploitation version of Predator. Instead of the jungle, we get a literal concrete jungle. Instead of Arnold, Jesse and Carl Weathers, we get character actors galore, like Danny Glover, Robert Davi, Gary Busey and Bill Paxton. It has the feel of RoboCop with a non-stop media barrage led by real-life junk TV icon Morton Downey, Jr. (“Zip it, pinhead!”), and a populace that is constantly armed and always looking for a chance to use it. It’s one of the few slices of the future where it feels like today — the technology is only nominally better and everything pretty much sucks for everyone. And holy shit, is it fucking hot.

The 1997 of this movie is really 2018, to be honest. Except LA is in the midst of a war between the Colombian and Jamaican drug cartels. It’s a perfect place for a Predator to hunt — and once that alien sees Lt. Harrigan (Glover) in action, it seems like it’s playing a game to capture the lawman as his ultimate prize. That’s when we meet Special Agent Peter Keyes (Busey), who is posing as a DEA agent, and new team member Detective Jerry Lambert (Paxton at his most manic).

There’s a scene where the Predator interrupts a voodoo ritual (the girlfriend screaming for her life is former Playboy Playmate turned porn star (that was a rare thing in the 1990’s) Teri Weigel) and wipes out everyone, skinning them alive and taking pieces of them as trophies. One of the team, Danny (singer Rubén Blades) comes back to the crime scene, only to be killed by the camoflagued alien.

Harrigan starts tracking the killer, thinking he’s dealing with a human. He even consults King Willie (Calvin Lockhart, The Beast Must Die), the voodoo loving gang leader. That’s when we get that immortal line that Ice Cube sampled, “There’s no stopping what can’t be stopped. No killing what can’t be killed.” A short battle follows with an awesome two cut (literally) of Willie screaming and his severed head being carried away, continuing the scream.

Two massive action scenes follow: Lambert and team member Cantrell (María Conchita Alonso) battling a gang and the Predator on a train, then Keyes and his team battling the Predator in what they think is the perfect situation.

It comes down to Harrigan and the Predator battling one on one, from rooftop to buildings to a spacecraft. Harrigan overcomes the alien with its own weapons, then an army of other Predators appear (this made me stand up and cheer when I saw this 27 years ago in the theater) and one of them hands the cop an ancient gun as a trophy before they leave him behind. That gun is engraved “Raphael Adolini 1715,” a reference to the Dark Horse comic book story Predator: 1718, which was published in  A Decade of Dark Horse #1.

To be honest — a TON of this film is taken from Dark Horse’s Predator: Concrete Jungle. The first few issues feature  Detective Schaefer, the brother of Major Alan “Dutch” Schaefer, as he and his partner, Detective Rasche, fight a Predator in New York City. And the inclusion of the Alien skull was inspired by Dark Horse’s Aliens vs. Predator series.

I love that Lilyan Chauvin is in this as Dr. Irene Richards, the chief medical examiner and forensic pathologist of Los Angeles. How woke is Predator 2? The main cop is African American leading an ethnically diverse team when that diversity isn’t an issue at all? Then you have a woman in charge of all pathology? How ahead of its time is this movie?

Adam Baldwin from TV’s Firefly has a brief role as a member of Keyes’ team. Plus, Robert Davi plays a police captain, Kent McCord from TV’s Adam-12 is a cop, Steve Kahan (who played Glover’s boss in four Lethal Weapon films) plays a police sergeant and Elpidia Carrillo reprises her role as Anna Gonsalves from the original in a cameo.

If you read the book version, you learn even more: Keyes recalls memories of speaking with Dutch in a hospital, as he suffered from radiation sickness. However, the soldier escaped, never to be seen again. Arnold himself escaped, refusing to do this movie because of the script, and he was nearly replaced by Steven Seagal and Patrick Swayze!

Director Stephen Hopkins went on to direct The Reaping, Lost in Space, The Ghost and the Darkness and Judgement Night (he also directed A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child before this). He had to recut the film twenty times to get an R rating! I’d love to see the uncut version of this. Shout Factory, how about it?

For now, you can watch the film online on HBO Go.

One of my favorite things about the film is this outtake. Stick through it to see Danny Glover dance along with some Predators!

Also: Holy shit, Gary Busey. He is in character the entire time, discussing how they’re hunting the Predator while also talking about it as a film. If this doesn’t make you love him, nothing will.