Ninì Grassia may have wrote, produced and wrote the music for this film, but in moments you can tell that it was directed by our pal Bruno Mattei, who didn’t even use one of his many names and just went anonymous (although Gianni Cozzolino, who did second unit on Mattei’s Legittima Vendetta and Omicidio al Telefono is listed as the director on IMDB).

Suria and her sister Nancy (Cristina Barsacchi, First Action Hero) are two young women from a wealthy family with very diferent love lives. Nancy plans to marry Roger, while Suria and her husband James (Antonio Zequila, who shows up in so many of Mattei’s softcore nineties output) constantly sleep around on one another.

Their lives change when Roger runs over a woman named Baby Ryan, which is the most hilarious character name I’ve heard of in some time. She’s played by Malù, the former adult star Ramba who is attempting to go legit. Yes, working with Bruno Mattei can be considered going legit.

The truth is that Baby Ryan is really Frank’s — the guardian of Suria’s villa — lover, but Frank is sleeping with Suria and this young girl gets intertwined into everyone’s lives, learning that James wants to sleep with her when he isn’t also having a bedroom rodeo with his secretary and maid.

But oh, the truth takes this movie from just a sexy Cinemax film to the realm of the giallo, as Baby Ryan is actually James’ sister. Their mother died young because she was so disgusted with her son, which is a very Italian mother reason for dying. That means that everyone decides to set him up with an orgy, because just divorcing the guy is not enough, convincing Frank that his sister has given him some oral cuddling, which is somehow a punishable offense in Italy. You’d never guess that from their movies, but there you go. Frank is shamed and everyone decides to live together and there will never be any jealousy issues or weirdness ever again.

If you ever wonder, what exactly is a Bruno Mattei completist, it would be the person who sought out this movie, found it and posted it to numerous internet sites. That would be me. I probably should be ashamed of my addiction.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Can you believe that we’ve written about Cruel Jaws twice? You can? These originally ran on December 12, 2018 and January 1, 2020. You can get this movie from Severin and watch it on Tubi.

Original review

Cruel Jaws has been released as Jaws 5 in many countries. It has nothing to do with the Jaws series of films other than ripping off footage from the first three films, as well as Deep Blood and The Last Shark. In fact, it goes so far to be Jaws that it rips off Hooper’s dialogue about what we know about sharks with some minor differences: “All they know how to do is swim and eat and make baby sharks, and that’s all.”

This one comes from the demented mind of Bruno Mattei, who also brought us crowd pleasers (if you consider me and my dog in the middle of the night a crowd) like Shocking Dark, The Other Hell and Rats: Night of Terror.

Dag Soerensen looks like Hulk Hogan, but he’s really the owner of the worst Sea World ever. His wife died in an accident and his daughter is in a wheelchair as a result, but even worse, he’s now behind on the rent. Greedy mobbed out real estate dude Sam Lewis is ready to shut him down, but Dag thinks he can capture the shark and save his little dolphin and seal mom and pop (well, until mom died) attraction.

It turns out that the shark in this one is a tiger shark engineered by the Navy to be a superweapon, yet it is now killing people all over Hampton Island. Dag and his family team up with Bill Morrisson, who desperately wants to be Hooper (even getting the stolen line mentioned above), to take out the shark with — you guessed it — explosives.

Most of the shark action — including the windsurfing scenes and the shark getting blown up — were ripped off completely from The Last Shark. Mattei also rips off Deep Blood and shark footage from the first three Jaws films, turning this into more of an exercise in sampling than an actual film. Yet I love it — where an American film would only hint at the bodies that wash up from an attack, Mattei revels in showing us gory bodies. I also adore that Mattei used the mafia subplot from the original novel that Spielberg took out of his movie. I’m certain he didn’t even realize what he was doing, which makes the end results even more entertaining.

There’s a windsurfing battle scene here — again, like I said, it’s all ripped off from The Last Shark — where one character says to another, “You’re a piece of shit. You’re vomit. You’re nothing.” while synthesizer beats bleat out of the screams of the crowd. Between that dialogue, the obvious cuts back to Castellari’s film and the fact that the two main windsurfers aren’t even moving as they race, I don’t know if I’ve ever been happier with an action sequence in a movie.

As part of this week of shark infested cinema, I tried to watch modern films that came out in the wake of Sharknado and couldn’t finish a single one of them. They all ape the Troma style, letting you in on the fact that they’re basically comedies. Screw that — I’d rather watch an inept film like this, with amateur American actors being unleashed upon dialogue stolen from other films while an Italian auteur (never has that word been applied to someone who exemplifies it less) barely puts together a coherent film.

Let me state my case one more time: Bruno Mattei used the music from Star Wars in this movie. Is this a hidden comment on how blockbusters destroyed the art and promise of the New Hollywood? Of course not. That said, I was so happy when the John Williams refrain played over dudes chumming the waters that I poured a drink over my head.

Shout! Factory almost released Cruel Jaws on a split blu ray with Exterminators of the Year 3000 in 2015, before realizing how much of the film is taken from other movies. “It came to our attention through several of our fans that Cruel Jaws had several scenes in it of unauthorized footage from Jaws 1-3 and other Italian-made shark films that makes it impossible for us to release this in the U.S. & Canada without risking legal ramifications. We gave serious thought about editing out the material of course, but it’s quite a bit of scenes to remove and we knew ultimately that doing that would not satisfy the film’s fans or new ones we wanted to attract.”

Another look

Theater of the Sea is one of the oldest marine mammal facilities in the world and has been operated by the McKenney family since its inception in 1946. Thousands have thrilled to its daily aquatic shows, yet somehow, it became the host for an Italian made for TV and then direct to video opus known as Cruel Jaws or The Beast and best of all, Jaws 5.

Yes, just imagine if the excitement of a film crew coming to your local otter park, shooting a movie in your neighborhood, and then the man you were told was William Snyder ends up being Bruno Mattei – the very same madman behind The Other Hell, Shocking Dark and Rats: Night of Terror.

An excitable Miami Herald article from December 4, 1994 proclaimed the big news that the town of El Portal was now Hampton Bay, which is perhaps Amity Island’s sister city. If they only knew what mania lay in wait. For Bruno Mattei was about to craft not just a shark movie, but a remix of all of his favorites. Yes, much like Girltalk or similar DJs mix together multiple songs to create a new patchwork narrative, Mattei was about to throw copyright laws and common sense to the wind to create an entirely new shark movie.

It all starts with a ship evading the Coast Guard to pilfer the remains of a sunken ship called the Cleveland because possibly Mattei had no idea what the Edmund Fitzgerald was. Within seconds, the scuba scavengers are beset not by pilfered footage from Enzo G. Castellari’s Great White. Yes, a movie that was sued into oblivion for ripping off Jaws has now suffered the very same unkind cut! That’s when the credits roll and promise us “Original Shark Design And Special Effects Created By Larry Mannini.” I’m here to inform you, dear reader, that none of these effects are original. Even more to the point, I refuse to believe that Larry Mannini is a real person. Much like Lewis Coates, David Hills and Raf Donato, I think it’s an alter ego to cover up that Mattei just simply spliced sharks from a variety of movies into this opus.

Soon, we meet Billy Morrison, who is not like Matt Hooper in any way, as he drives with his girlfriend Vanessa as she chides him for leaving her last summer to chase killer whales. This year, he promises her sailing, tennis and disco until dawn. If only, Billy. He’s on the way to meet his pal Dag Snerensen, a Hulk Hogan lookalike with two kids — Bobby and the wheelchair-bound Susy — who also owns a bottom tier Sea World.

Susy lost the use of her legs in the accident that also took Dag’s wife out of this world. And now it’s time to meet Sheriff Berger, who serves the Hulkster’s brother with an eviction notice. Turns out that he’s three months behind on his rent to the evil land baron Samuel Lewis and only has 30 days to pay up.

But where are the sharks, you ask? Fear not. A bunch of kids running along the beach trip over the remains of one of the scuba guys from before and unlike an American movie that would just show their frightened faces, this film lingers over the gory latex aftermath. One autopsy later and Brody and Hopper – whoops, I mean Berger and Morrison — want to close the beach during the busiest weekend of the season.

After several party scenes and moments of cavorting on the beach, Mattei grows bored with presenting human beings that act like no real people you’ve ever met before and decides to start the killing anew, as a girl runs smack dab into the Chrissie Watkins scene from Jaws. Again, I’m not saying it’s a similar shot. It’s the exact same footage grafted into this film.

It turns out that the antagonist in this movie is a tiger shark engineered by the Navy to be a superweapon. Now, it’s killing people all over Hampton Island, so this film is also stealing the plot of Piranha, another movie directly inspired by Jaws. Along the way, the Mafia subplot from the novel Jaws was based on, the windsurfing race from The Last Shark and a Regatta stolen from Jaws 2 all happen. It’s like K-Tel’s Greatest Shark Attacks of the 1980’s with all your favorite great white super hits!

If none of this convinces you that you need to see this film — made by an Italian crew shooting a largely amateur group of Americans — then let me add that Mattei included some of John Williams’ music from Star Wars on his soundtrack, where it sits alongside screaming synth music and generic disco. Truly, this movie has something for everyone.

“You’re a piece of shit! You’re vomit! You’re nobody!” one character yells at another at one point. It’s dialogue like this that keeps me coming back to Italian bootleg cinema. In fact, the word shit is thrown around here like a racist epithet in a Tarantino film; allusions to feces fill nearly every story beat of this epic. Yet the greatest line is when the sheriff yells, “We’re going to need a bigger helicopter.” You really can’t write dialogue that great, It just has to happen.

Scream Factory, a subsidiary of Shout! Factory, once planned to release this movie on blu ray as a double feature along with Exterminators of the Year 3000. However, once they realized how much footage this movie cribbed from the Jaws trilogy and other Italian shark epics, they canceled the release.

That’s cowardice. Was Bruno Mattei worried about stealing directly from Spielberg even after years of lawsuits against any film that came close to Jaws? Nope. He didn’t just take from the original, but its two sequels as well. It was if he was daring the American judicial system to come after him.

Please keep in mind that this is no Sharknado or sub-Troma effort. Mattei was really trying to make a great shark movie. And that’s why I love this movie, particularly the big shark attack sequence about an hour into the film where everyone devolves into screaming morons. There were no second takes in this movie, no ADR re-recorded audio, no one in wardrobe to tell one of the girls that her white leotard outfit is ridiculous, no focus group to warn the filmmakers that this movie is borderline incomprehensible.

Yet with every viewing, my romance with Cruel Jaws grows more passionate. How can you not love a movie that ends ninety minutes of body munching gore and profanity-laden dialogue with a Scooby Doo-laugh filled close where a seal launches the newly redeemed bad guy into the ocean?

This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum Special Issue #4, which you can buy here.

Also known as Gli occhi dentro (The Eyes Inside) and Occhi senza volto (Eyes Without a Face), this Bruno Mattei* giallo — made a few decades late, but hey, give the man a break — tells the story of Giovanna Dei (Monica Carpanese, who is also in Mattei’s Dangerous Attraction and Legittima Vendetta). She’s the creator of a comic book called Doctor Dark, the tale of an anti-hero who is a Pagan professor by day and a babysitter killer by night, cutting out his victim’s eyes and replacing them with shards of broken glass. Now, someone is acting out the murders in real life and leaving the ocular evidence in her apartment.

Written by Lorenzo De Luca — who is writing the upcoming Anthropophagus 2 and The Fourth Horsemen which will have Franco Nero as Keoma and Fred Williamson as Cobra, as well as appearances by Mick Garris Alex Cox, Ruggero Deodato, Fabio Testi, Enzo G. Castellari, Gianni Garko, Ottaviano Dell’Acqua, R.A. Mihailoff, Massimo Vanni and more — and shot by much of the same crew that worked on the aforementioned Dangerous Attraction.

There’s a fair amount of story taken from Tenebre — like the line “If they kill someone with a power drill, do they take it out on Black and Decker?” which comes directly from Peter Neal’s question “Let me ask you something? If someone is killed with a Smith and Wesson revolver…do you go and interview the president of Smith and Wesson?” in Argento’s movie, as well as the idea of art becoming real-life murder. Doctor Dark’s trick of putting glass into the eye sockets of his victims feels a lot like Manhunter. And, of course, there’s Eyeball to be taken from as well. And while we’re on the subject, the entire plot of Sexy Cat. But the most grievous theft is in the Italian VHS release of this film, which completely takes two murder scenes from Lamberto Bava’s A Blade in the Dark. Did Mattei think no one would notice**?

That said, it may just be the fact that I love giallo and am a Bruno Mattei apologist, but I found myself liking this movie. You’d have to be a superfan of both for me to recommend it to you, but if you are, come on over and watch it with me.

*Using the name Herik Montgomery.

**Trick question. He didn’t care.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Herbert P. Caine is the pseudonym of a frustrated academic and genre movie fan in Pennsylvania. You can read his blog at https://imaginaryuniverseshpc.blogspot.com.

Musophobia, or the fear of rats and mice, is one of the most common phobias. This should not be surprising, as rats are legitimately frightening creatures capable of savagely attacking a human and spreading lethal diseases. One acquaintance of mine can testify to their scariness, having had several unpleasant encounters with them during his childhood, including stepping on a rat and happening upon a mob of rats devouring a dead dog in an abandoned building.

Consequently, it is only natural that rats have been a go-to subject for horror, ranging from stories such as H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” and James Herbert’s The Rats. Director Bruno Mattei’s Rats: Night of Terror may not live up to these classics, but it still manages to deliver an enjoyable hour and a half of thrills. The film follows a group of post-apocalyptic nomads who stumble into an abandoned settlement (composed of sets that had previously appeared in Once Upon a Time in America) that appears to have all the food and water they will ever need. Unfortunately, it boasts some prior inhabitants who don’t appreciate interlopers in their rodent paradise.

Rats delivers the primary thing one wants from a film like this: gore. Mattei thinks up some interesting ways for his rats to kill people that go beyond simply swarming and devouring them, in particular one scene that manages to evoke Alien while giving it a particularly queasy twist. (The scene is graphic enough that it caused Rats to encounter censorship issues in Ontario, Canada.) Although the gore effects reflect the film’s limited budget, they still manage to elicit a cringe or two. Beyond the bloodshed, Mattei manages to inject some genuine tension into certain scenes, as when some of the nomads had to tiptoe their way through a small army of rats.

The film also benefits from a reasonably decent cast for a low-budget Italian genre movie. Geretta Geretta of Demons fame appears as Chocolate, the lone black person in the troupe of nomads, bringing a certain level of charisma to the proceedings. (Geretta gave an interview to Delirium magazine reminiscing about her time working on Rats several years ago.) Fausto Lombardi (credited as Tony Lombardo) is also interesting in the role of Deus, the group’s resident mystic who goes around with a triangle drawn on his head. At times, I found myself wishing that they had concentrated more on Deus than the nomads’ leader, a rather uninspiring macho man type played by Ottaviano Dell’Acqua.

The film does have some issues, however. In particular, some of the dialogue is straight-up clunky. For instance, when one of the nomads rebels against him, the leader angrily warns that “Next time, I won’t be len-I-ent!” enunciating each syllable to comic effect. More disturbingly, in some scenes, the cast actually appear to be throwing rats around and actually hurting them, to the point that the Rifftrax version of the film has a disclaimer warning that the movie “Includes some scenes of violence against rats.” Geretta Geretta, while not directly addressing the issue of animal abuse during the filming, admits that some rats died on set and continued to be used in the background by Mattei, to the point that the set began to smell.

The film also features the horror standby of characters acting in incredibly stupid ways, to the point that viewers start to lose sympathy for them. For example, in one scene, the characters board up the entrances to the room they are holed up in to protect themselves from the rats, but fail to notice an open window. One guess what happens next.

Nevertheless, Rats: Night of Terror is well worth watching. It delivers all the thrills and fun you could reasonably expect from a film like this, and there are certainly worse entries in the killer rat genre (cough…Deadly Eyes).

Rats: Night of Terror can be viewed for free on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oh man, this movie. I love this movie. I also realize that it is complete junk, but I love it for the same reason I love potato chips! This originally was on our site on June 26, 2018.

In the Christian year 2015, the insensitivity of man finally triumphs and hundreds of atomic bombs devastate all five continents. Terrified of the slaughter and destruction, the few survivors of the disaster seek refuge under the ground. From that moment begins the era that will come to be called “after the bomb” — the period of the second human race. A century later, several men, dissatisfied with the system imposed on them by the new humanity, choose to revolt and live on the surface of the Earth as their ancestors did. So, yet another race begins, that of the new primitives. The two communities have no contact for a long period. The humans still living below ground are sophisticated and despise the primitives, regarding them as savages. This story begins on the surface of the Earth in the year 225 A.B. (After the Bomb)

Rats the Night of Terror begins with a punk gang investigating a mysterious town. Let’s meet the folks we’re going to spend the next 105 minutes with. Kurt and Taurus (Massimo Vanni, Warriors of the Wasteland) share the leadership responsibilities, but Duke really wants to take over. Then there’s Chocolate (Geretta Geretta from Demons), a poorly named black woman who gets flour all over herself and dances around while yelling, “I’m whiter than you!” Obviously Italian directors in 1984 were not yet “woke.” Lucifer and Lilith are, of course, a couple. At least she has plenty of fashion sense, traveling through the end of days wearing a cape and fedora. Noah is the resident genius, while Video is an expert at video games. Yep, that’s why they brought him along, despite the fact that there are no video games left. Deus has a shaved head with a strange symbol, is given to mystic rantings and has on one of The Warriors’ vests. Finally, we have Diana, who wears a studded headband and is the girlfriend of Barry Gibb lookalike Kurt, and Myrna, whose scream is ready to reduce your eardrums to quivering masses of cartilage.

Surprisingly, the gang finds plenty of food in this town. Of course, they also discover plenty of mutilated bodies and lots of rats. But at least the town looks nice, maybe because it’s the same set as Once Upon a Time in America.

Why aren’t the rats eating the food? Look, this was written and directed by Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso, so you better be ready to throw logic into the cold, dead void of space. What else can you expect from the team that brought you Zombie 3, The Other Hell, Robowar and Emanuelle Escapes from Hell? And you may also know Fragasso from another film that makes perfect sense, Troll 2. Just like that film, which has nothing to do with the movie it succeeds, this was billed as the third part of Enzo G. Castellari’s Bronx Warriors series. Again — check logical storytelling at la porta.

Luckily for our heroes, they discover a hydroponic growing system that’s made the kindest bud ever known to man. Just kidding — the crops are fruit, vegetables and plants, along with purified water.

Night falls and everyone goes to sleep in the same room. Lilith and Lucifer have sex while everyone else either watches or performs their signature character move, such as polishing a guitar or meditating. Our young lovers get stuck in their sleeping bag while everyone laughs at them, using that hearty guffaw that only Italian dubbed voices can perform. Lilith ends up deciding not to have any more sex — her Southern accent is beyond reproach — and Lucifer stalks off, while she zips herself back into that troublesome sleeping bag.

That’s when our merry band discovers that while they may have dressed for a Road Warrior ripoff, they took a wrong turn at Barter Town and ended up in a slasher film.

Even after the bombs drop, you should know better than to have sex in one of these affairs. That means we can cross off our demonically named couple. He just falls into a hole of rats whereas she gets stuck in that cursed sleeping bag as rats climb in. When the rest of the crew discovers her, a rat climbs out from her mouth in a scene that’s sure to make you either laugh uncontrollably, puke out your last meal or some combination thereof.

I just had a flash — the way everyone is dressed in this film, including Kurt in his white shirt and red ascot, it’s as if the Scooby Gang tried to escape New York. The costumes in this film are fabulous! Good work, Elda Chinellato!

This film sets new standards for rats killing humans. How did they achieve such special effects? One assumes that someone was off camera, just tossing rodents at the unfortunate cast. Well, one doesn’t have to assume, because that’s pretty much exactly what happened, PETA be damned.

Meanwhile, Noah gets attacked by rats, so they decide to scare the rodents off with a flamethrower. Bad idea, unless you enjoy barbecuing your friends. Then, they discover that the rats have eaten their tires off of their motorcycles. How did they do such a thing? What do you mean they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They’re animals!

Myrna continues to scream at any and every opportunity while our heroes barricade themselves into the building and wonder, “Has there ever been worse dubbing in a film?” No, my friends. No, there has not. Instead of just asking you rhetorically to imagine the diseases a rat can give you, this film lists them at length.

Who is the biggest enemy? Duke or the rats? Well, Duke may be shooting at them with a machine gun, but he hasn’t eaten anyone from within yet. The good guys keep giving Duke chance after chance, even after he’s more than proved that he’s a ne’er do well. Eventually, he blows himself and Myrna up real good.

Diana just can’t take it any longer, so she slits her wrists. Then, Video learns that the building they’re hiding in was an experimental station for something called Return to Light. Not “Remain In Light.” That’s a Talking Heads record. Also, the rats are super intelligent and see this place as an affront. ”This is worse than being dead,” says Kurt, while he sashays in his little pirate costume.

Have you ever thought, “It must be really fun to be an actor?” Then you weren’t in this movie. For the entire running time, giant piles of rats are poured everywhere and anywhere and on just about everyone.

The rats finally try to break the door down to the control room and all hell breaks loose. Meanwhile, these guys in yellow hazmat suits and masks from The Crazies start walking through the streets.

Deus is killed by Myrna’s corpse and even Kurt is killed by a bunch of rats that fly at him from every angle. Video and Chocolate are then saved by the people in the hazmat suits, who have been gassing all of the rats.  

Here’s where Rats: The Night of Terror unveils its shock ending. The hazmat guys are the people from Delta 2. Chocolate then says to one of her rescuers, ““Once, someone told me they read in a book that we all lived on the Earth together, that we were all brothers. The book was called the Bible, and it said that God created man and animals.” The leader of the men takes off his mask and he’s no man at all — he’s a human rat!

It’s a twist ending that isn’t explained and doesn’t make any sense at all! It would be like Peyton Farquhar shat his pants at the end of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge instead of getting lynched!

Rats: The Night of Terror isn’t a good movie. But it’s a great movie. A movie that you can tell people about and they’ll say, “That’s not a real movie.” But it is. It totally is.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This article originally appeared in Drive-In Asylum Issue 10.

As World War II comes to a close, the top Nazi officials have become crazed when it comes to discovering anyone who wants to overthrow Adolf Hitler. Their plan? Train ten of the most beautiful prostitutes to protect Der Fuhrer.

Sure, that seems like it’ll work.

The director may be listed as Jordan B. Matthews, but we all know that that’s Bruno Mattei, whose frenetic mania is on full display here, as nearly every fetish — and then some — is on display as these frauleins do their good girl best for the fatherland.

Hans Schellenberg (Gabriele Carrara) has been tasked with training the women, along with Luciano Pigozzi as Prof. Jürgen and the super-intense Frau Inge (Marina Daunia, Escape from Women’s Prison, Women’s Camp 119), who is gorgeous even with the gigantic scar on her face. Plus, Macha Magall (The Beast In Heat), Gota Gobert (Savage Island), Monica Nickel (A Woman in the Night), Tamara Triffez (Salon Kitty) and Ivano Staccioli as Oberstgruppenführer Berger show up.

The training montage — which includes everything from hunchback aardvarking to dressing up in togas and blasting machine guns — is simply astounding in its complete ridiculousness. Then Schellenberg begins dressing like a Nazi pope and conducting masses.

Man, this movie is as scummy as it gets and you may just adore wallowing in its brash inanity. I say this as a compliment, as if we’ve learned anything this week, it’s that I just can’t seem to hate a Bruno Mattei movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: We covered Scalps back on October 24, 2020. Seeing as how we’re celebrating all things Bruno Mattei this week, let’s discuss it all over again.

Well, since we covered the other movie named Scalps this month, I feel like I wouldn’t be doing my job on this site if I skipped a movie by the same title, but directed by the titanic twosome that is Werner Knox and Vincent Dawn.

You know who I mean. Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragrasso. Yes, the men who gifted us with magic like Shocking Dark, Night Killer and Troll 2. They’re the literal bread and butter that makes this site churn, baby.

The Civil War may be over, but try telling that to Colonel Connor (Alberto Farnese), who has taken over a Texan fort and is brazen enough to try and buy Yari (Mapi Galan, Phantom of Death) from her tribe. When they refuse, they kill everyone but her.

She escapes and meets up with one of Connor’s ex-soldiers named Matt (Vassili Karis, The Arena). While he hates Native Americans, he despises Connor even more and nurses her to help. Together, they get the revenge they both need, which mostly consists of Yari scalping everyone she can.

Made with the same crew and much of the same cast as White Apache, the amazing thing is that this movie feels more like a late 60’s Italian Western than a 1987 exploitation movie. This is way better than you’d believe, especially from the men who made Robowar. It also has way more scalping than the other version of Scalps, if you’re looking for a scalping movie.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of my favorite movies and we originally covered it on October 29, 2018. Bruno Mattei may have only done a few pick up shots in this, but what he did do made it even stranger, if that were possible.

Say what you will about Claudio Fragasso. From the films he co-wrote with his Rossella Drudi for Bruno Mattei, like Robowar, Zombi 3, Rats: Night of Terror, The Other Hell and Shocking Dark to the films he’s either co-directed or directed, such as Scalps, Troll 2 and Beyond Darkness, he’s created movies that you can see as inept and strange that were made by someone who has no understanding of how human beings think, act or speak. Or you can see it my way — they are works of pure genius, the fruits of a demented mind that doesn’t need to be grounded by such concerns as budget, traditional storytelling or common sense.

Fragasso saw this as a tense psychological thriller with little to no gore and the original cut of the film resembled his vision. However, the producers wanted more violence, so they brought in Bruno Mattei to add the gore. Those very same producers also retitled the film Non Aprite Quella Porta 3 (Don’t Open the Door 3) so that it would appear to be another film in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre series (yep, this is getting into La Casa/Demons territory).

Within the first eight minutes of this movie, we’ve seen nudity, aerobics dancing on stage while a director has a near meltdown of amateur acting proportions, the killer disemboweling two women and the director falling off a balcony to her death, all set to some of the most chipper synth turns you’ve ever heard. Buckle up — this movie gets even weirder from here.

The film picks back up after the quick credits to introduce us to Melanie (Tara Buckman from Silent Night, Deadly Night; Cannonball Run; Joe D’Amato’s Blue Angel Cafe and Never Too Young to Die, the kind of credits that make you royalty around these parts), who is tooling around in a flimsy negligee while some dude picks up her daughter Clarissa and delivers her to another woman. Soon, she’s furiously typing and smoking in a sweater that reveals one shoulder, all while she’s wearing a blue scarf. She also has a teddy bear on her desk that the camera focuses on, which is yet another Fragasso directorial tic.

It seems like our heroine has two phone lines to handle all the calls she gets, which are mostly harassment from her ex-husband. One dude that calls her is so upset that he smashes a glass in his hand while bellowing, “Melanie? Melanie! MELANIE!”

What soon follows is one of the most batshit moments I’ve seen in film (imagine how much that statement covers), as Melanie gives herself a breast exam in front of a mirror while saying, “Well here you are, Melanie Beck. This is you. You have a daughter, you’ve got a marriage on the rocks and nothing but gray skies ahead.” Soon, another phone line rings and another voice says, “You’re a fine looking woman, Beck. Just begging to be fucked senseless.”

Imagine if Cobra Commander called you and wanted you to talk him off. That’s the Night Killer. Let’s talk about the villain of this film. He has a face kind of sort of like Freddy, but instead of attacking you in your dreams, he relies on the aforementioned obscene phone calls. He also has a clawed hand, but instead of sharp razor-like knives, he has bendy rubber fingers. They’re either really sharp or he’s really strong because he keeps punching women through the stomach in an insert shot that looks like the same effect every single time.

Melanie calls the police for advice and trust me, these cops are second to the dumb fuzz in Stagefright. Officer Gabrielle asks for her phone number, to which Melanie tearfully replies, “I have two lines.” The cop is unfazed. “Give me both numbers.” Dialogue like this is why you have not only Fragasso but his wife Rossella writing your script.

The cops tell her to lock herself in the house and not let anyone in, but this being an Italian horror movie, they’re going to rip off that “the calls are coming from inside the house” moment from Black Christmas at the very beginning of the film, instead of waiting for the end. The Night Killer is in the house and horny!

The Night Killer may not be able to haunt your dreams, but he can certainly imitate voices, as he calls the cops back as Melanie’s husband and then survives getting shot at by her. He then whispers more sweet nothings before kidnapping her for eight hours. Why doesn’t he kill her? Who knows!

We cut to a hospital where a cop and a fake Dr. Loomis named Dr. Willow are discussing the case. She’s seen the killer’s face, but now she can’t remember who he is and even the fact that she has a daughter. And now we have a reporter wearing an outfit that can best be described as Italian cowboy ala 1990, as she interviews the next-door neighbor who had the gift for Melanie’s daughter, who shows off the scar the Night Killer gave him and discusses how he and his wife have temporary custody of Clarissa. His wife then tops every bad performance you’ve ever seen in a Fragasso film with a line reading that can charitably be described as vapidly morose. This is also when we learn that Clarissa’s dad was a cop kicked off the force for excessive violence.

I remember in seventh grade English that our teacher told us that in a mystery story, there’s no extraneous information. Everything could be a clue and that we had to learn to listen for them and discover how each small piece of the puzzle adds up to the solution to the crime. Obviously, she had never seen a Claudio Fragaasso film, where red herrings are thrown with the force of Major League Baseball fastballs right at your brainstem.

Note: Nearly every woman in this movie wears a fur coat.

With that in mind, we catch up to Melanie who is driving around in her convertible when Axel (Peter Hooten, who we all remember was the 1970’s Dr. Strange, as well as appearing in the truly ridiculous Slashed Dreams/Sunburst, Orca, 2020 Texas Gladiators and Just a Damned Soldier with B&S About Movies all-star Mark Gregory) drives up to her and starts sexually harassing her. He follows her into a women’s bathroom where she pulls out a gun and forces him to disrobe, then flushes all of his clothes down the toilet. If you learn anything from Night Killer, this is where you will learn that Peter Hooten has massive balls. I’m not talking nerves of steel. I’m worried that his massive testicles are about to burst that purple thong he’s wearing.

There are times in my life where I laugh so hard that I lose consciousness, where it feels like I can see through the very fabric of reality and I need to hold onto this plane of existence so that I don’t push my soul into another plane. One of these moments happened during this scene, as Axel chases after Melanie in his boxers. A guy at the front desk looks up and says, “Hey bud, what happened to your clothes?” Axel replies, “I got molested…in the little boy’s room!”

Melanie follows this moment of insanity by going to the beach, setting up a blanket, laying out all of her booze and the biggest prescription pill bottles you’ve ever seen in your life and proceeding to overdose. Axel arrives just in time and fully dressed, taking her into the seawater, which he claims is the only cure.

Axel: What the hell do you think you’re doing?

Melanie: Committing…suicide…

Axel: Well you gotta drink seawater so you can throw up all of that shit you’ve been taking!

Melanie: Are you…crazy?

Has Claudio Fragasso discovered the hidden secret to the opioid epidemic? Is it having Peter Hooten get you in a doggy style Heimlich maneuver while making you ingest H2O and NaCl as stirring synth music plays?

Keep in mind that we are literally one-third through this movie and it’s already blown my mind numerous times. Folks, this is why you watch Italian ripoff cinema.

We cut to a dinner party where a drunk blonde girl is talking to a mysterious stranger. “You want me to go with you? Where? I wasn’t born yesterday. If a stranger asks for something, there’s a rat in somewhere. What my mama used to always say. But seeing as how I could never stand the sight of the old lady, I’ll come out with you and risk the unknown. To hell with the old bitch, here’s to the unknown!”

Melanie wakes up in a strange hotel room as more synths play.

We then cut right back to another room that’s filled with paintings of the Night Killer that look like the work of a small child. Our villain then takes that blonde from the bar into his apartment, puts on his mask and glove, and she says, “What are you doing?” Again, indulge me as I transcribe this dialogue.

Night Killer: Do you know the story of Little Red Riding Hood?

Girl: Sure. Ah. I get it. I’m Little Red Riding Hood and you’re the big bad wolf. You know, I think I’m just a little tipsy.

Night Killer: Go on with the story.

Girl: Oh grandmother, what big claws you have.

Night Killer: All the better to hold you with.

Girl: What a nutcase!

Night Killer: Don’t stop.

Girl: OK. Granny, what a big, ugly mug you have. Well? Now you’re the one who’s stopped. Oh, why grandmother. What big schlong you have. I don’t like this game anymore. Please take me home.

That’s when the Night Killer murders her by repeatedly shoving her face into liquid latex before he, of course, punches her through the stomach. It’s his signature move, after all! He then fondles her and tells her dead body that now, they’ll make love and he kisses her.

We cut back to Melanie locked in the hotel room with Axel, who comes in with a fresh box of KFC and her clothes dry cleaned. How long was she out? He goes through her pills (“Valium. Syringe. A gun! Barbituates!” which is dialogue that sounds like a Queens of the Stone Age song.) Melanie then puts a gun to her own head, to which Axel replies by eating fried chicken right in her face. “Takes balls to kill yourself. And the only person with those around here in the right place? Yours truly.” Yes, Peter Hooten. We’ve seen your giant massive beanbag, so we’ll agree.

Axel somehow gets her gun and puts it in her mouth, telling her he’s going to kill her when he says so, when she least expects it. He tells her that he’s her master and she lays down on the bed. They make a pact as he puts a switchblade up against her face. He then decides to go out and let off a little steam, leaving her locked up with all his fried chicken.

We then cut to an aquarium, where a doctor checks an overflow valve. The Night Killer shows up, slowly chasing her before feeling her up and ripping open her blouse. She screams and runs as he gives ever so slowly chase. I’ve seen plenty of girls run in slasher movies, but never one as lazy as this. She soon pays by taking the Night Killer’s big move backward.

Melanie isn’t doing well. She’s written “I kill you kill me” on the mirror in lipstick. Axel comes back to tie her to the bed as we get long shots of Hooten slicing up fabric against his manly chest.

More news footage follows as we see a press conference interrupted by the victim from the aquarium being loaded into an ambulance. “The maniac tore her into pieces and fed her to the fish. It’s enough to hurt my stomach thinking about it!” yells a cop. Hey look! It’s Claudio Fragasso as a reporter hitting the cop car window, trying to get more of the story!

We’re back to Melanie and Axel in bed, as he kisses her and she asks to be untied. Somehow, this movie went from A Nightmare on Elm Street to Fifty Shades of Spaghetti. Or, more likely, The Devil’s Honey. Of course, they make love.

Another press conference follows as the media wants to know where Melanie is. Dr. Willow fills them in, as he explains how the Night Killer has impacted Melaine’s life.

Dr. Willow: Melanie Beck is living in a state of dissociative schizophrenia, triggered by the trauma of the experience she was forced to undergo. The poor woman went through the most traumatic ordeal that a human being can experience. A clinical examination of the patient revealed an inordinate amount of seminal fluid. The pure evil of the violence that was put upon her has unhinged her mind. The patient now has a very fragile grip on reality.

There’s also an insane theory by the doctor here where he believes that she gave in during her eight-hour ordeal so that she could survive and now, she’s punishing herself and wants to kill herself as the result. It kind of reminds me of that scene where all the old men discuss how a woman should behave in The Entity. The doctor claims if she goes through the same ordeal again, she’d be back to normal. But then, the psycho would recognize her and kill her.

One of the few movies that Lee Lively, who plays Dr. Willow, was in other than Night Killer was the Barbara Streisand vehicle The Prince of Tides, a fact that pleases me inordinately.

Peter Hooten is all sweaty and drinking outside the hotel room when Melanie decides to put a bullet into her mirror, leading him to do a spit take. No normal human being would ever make a movie that combines all of the words I’ve just said above this other than Fragasso.

The cops find Melanie’s car, but now they’re arguing with Dr. Willow, who had a plan to catch the Night Killer that has gone to hell.

Another press conference. Another fur coat. Now, the police reveal that they think the Night Killer has abducted Melanie. We cut to a Christmas tree as the next-door neighbor watches the press conference. And the manager of the hotel calls the police to tell them he’s found Melanie.

The black cop gets to the hotel just in time to get jumped. And the next-door neighbor grabs a gun and decides to go out after the Night Killer. Dude, seriously, I’m in the dark. Is he her ex-husband? Is the kidnapper her ex-husband? And now the neighbor’s wife is going crazy! How many red herrings can one movie have? When Fragasso at the helm, the number is beyond comprehension.

Melanie has on yet another fur — and the largest hat ever — as her kidnapper makes a taunting call to the cops, leading to her escaping. The tension is, well, not palpable, but there sure are a lot of f-bombs.

Now we have a multiple person chase with Melanie running, the kidnapper chasing her and the neighbor saying that he’s trying to help her as a sad saxophone plays and the kidnapper screams, “NO!”

The neighbor tells Melanie to lock herself in the house — that worked so well last time — while he gets help and her daughter. She watches as a man calls her from a payphone outside her window. It’s the Night Killer! He’s back! She’s shocked and screams, but come on. Who else would it be? The phone rings again and there he is — back in the house. The Night Killer reveals himself to be the next-door neighbor, who we finally learn is named Sherman. He claims that his wife is right, that she’s a bitch in heat and Mrs. Beck is the reason why he’s scarred for life.

We flash back to how he tortured her, which is the same way that Axel treated her. So wait — was Axel a cop and maybe even her ex-husband doing the same torture so that Melanie would remember who the killer was? What kind of cops and psychologists are these people? Also: all of these memories appear in a weird haze with liquid effects over everything.

Melanie comes on to the Night Killer, telling him how much she missed how he touched her, kissing him and cooing in his ear. She finds his knife and stabs him right in the cockmeat. Axel arrives just in time, jumping through a glass window and firing multiple bullets into Sherman. Melanie and Axel embrace, so I guess he is her ex-husband?

If you think this movie is going to end without more press conferences, you haven’t been paying attention. Dr. Willow says that Mr. and Mrs. Beck were guinea pigs and they had to make her relive this all to find the killer. Seriously, these are the worst cops and people ever. Axel Beck isn’t just getting his job back, he’s getting a promotion. And now, he’s back in bed with his wife and daughter. Seems like a happy ending, right?

Nope. Clarissa interacts with a gift box in the slowest of motion, carrying it lovingly up the steps as we catch up with the Becks in bed. Now, Clarissa is jumping up and down on the bed, ever so languidly unwrapping the gift. You just know what was inside the box — the Night Killer’s mask.

Clarissa is wearing it, as she ends the movie by saying, “Do you recognize me Miss Beck? I’m back. Just for you. Just for you!” and laughing.

Not since the end of Rats: Night of Terror has Fragasso pulled off an ending this audacious. Some would say moronic. Not me. After all, the Night Killer had to give Clarissa that gift before Axel kidnapped his own wife, knowing that they would kill him and Sherman/Night Killer would have to somehow teach her — or maybe his wife did it — how to talk like the Night Killer. Or maybe the mask is possessed? And why did he switch from claws to a switchblade and gun?

This movie is utterly confounding. This is why traditional movies end up boring me, because they make too much sense. If you’re looking for narrative jumps that leap into orbit, if you’re seeking out the unhinged, if you have ever wanted to watch a movie that goes from Elm Street to giallo to pre-Seven box related ending five years before that film was released and if you watched Troll 2 and said, “But what if the same people made a movie that makes even less sense?”, please consider this a strong recommendation.

Of course, Severin put this out. I feel like I have to make some kind of blood sacrifice to pay them back at this rate. You can also watch this on Tubi.

When you have a career the length of Bruno Mattei’s, the genres you work in constantly shift, bringing in everything from cannibal and zombie films to westerns, women in prison epics, peblum and the very Italian form of the sex comedy, which is what Cuginetta, amore mio! (Little Cousin, My Love!) or Love Sacrifice is all about.

Leonida (Gino Pagnani, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) is employed by his rich uncle Count Aristid at least the old man until dies in the Biblical company of a maid named Ornella (Paola Maiolini, Emanuelle Around the World, Convoy Busters). Thinking that he’ll inherit the estate, Leonida has already moved his family in, but they all learn that everything will go to Marco, the master’s secret son.

However, Leonida has a plan. He wants his daughter Nicoletta (Ziggy Zanger, Black Emmanuelle, White Emmanuelle) to marry the newly rich Marco with the help of his wife Elvira (Ria De Simone, Mattei’s Women’s Camp 119), who may have designs on the young man for herself.

Mattei wrote this script along with Private House of the SS writer Giacinto Bonacquisti and Luigi Montefiori, who we all know and love much better as George Eastman.

Your mileage on Italian sex comedies may vary, but it’s still astounding to me how many genres Mattei found the time — and backing — to be part of.

You can watch this on YouTube.

I have no idea who the John Heston this movie’s poster promises, but I do know that this peplum film was obviously made in the wake of another movie with a very similar title. It’s also the third film in the series of Dieci Gladiatori films that began with Gianfranco Parolini’s 1963 effort The Ten Gladiators and continued with Nick Nostro’s Triumph of the Ten Gladiators.

Nostro would direct this as well, working from a script that he co-wrote with Alfonso Balcázar (A Pistol for Ringo) and Sergio Sollima (The Big Gundown).

The film begins with Rocca (Dan Vadis, who was a member of Mae West’s Muscleman Revue before acting in sword and sandal films) and his nine gladiators performing for the emperor. However, they are followed by the gladiators of Thrace, who are forced to kill one another, leaving only one man standing. The last two are a father and a son, which Spartacus (Giovanni Di Benedetto, using the John Heston name like a little sneak!) stops the madness and lobs a sword at the emperor’s balcony box.

Rocca’s gladiators defend Spartacus against all odds and also wildly shifting narrative tones. At some moments, wacky music plays as the men battle soldiers and at other moments, there is a discussion of dogs shredding people apart. Sometimes wacky, sometimes horrifying, that’s Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators, which totally features its own “I am Spartacus” scene.

Also, Helga Liné shows up as Daliah. You may — you totally should — remember her from Horror Express, Special Mission Lady Chaplin, The Vampires’ Night Orgy, So Sweet…So Peverse, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Nightmare Castle and so many more films.

Who put all this together, throwing the right edit together so that this film made some semblance of narrative sense? Bruno Mattei, in one of his first jobs as an editor. He’d continue in that role for the early part of his career, as well as doing a similar job on nearly all of his own films.

You can watch this on Tubi.