Not to be confused with Emanuelle and the Erotic Nights — that’s the safer one — this film finds Joe D’Amato and Bruno Mattei at the helm, starting things off with Laura Gemser appearing as Emanuelle with one m, saying, “It’s your old friend Emanuelle again…”  before taking us on a journey.

What a horrific journey it is!

Also known as Sexy Night Report, there’s a 70-minute edited version of this movie that’s still pretty rough. But man, the unedited one? You need to wash your eyes with fire after watching it.

Sure, this being a mondo means most of the footage is faked. So yesh, while a good portion of this one is beyond unreal, with scenes like a man in an ape costume “performing” with an exotic dancer and another where an Amsterdam red light girl shows off for a crowd before choosing a man from the window watchers, leaving his wife outside. Then, the movie descends into what I can only imagine Sodom and Gomorrah looked like to Lot’s wife before she was turned into seasoning.

Yes, in case you wondered if you were still watching a mondo, we have chickens getting their heads cut off, rituals in foreign countries, ping pong balls being launched out of a special place, a magic trick that turns someone into a hermaphrodite and, of course, a man’s member being chopped off again and again, as the scene is replayed from every angle, looking faker and faker each time.

It’s like Mattei — Jimmy Matheus! — and D’Amato — uncredited! — were thinking, “We’ve shown these raincoaters naked women for the last ninety minutes or so. Let’s show them a pisello get sliced off and then someone get their head cut off to remind them who we are.”

We get it, Bruno and Joe. Or Vincent Dawn and Aristide Massaccesi. Or David Hunt and David Hills.

Marina Hedmann — speaking of extra names, she was also known as Marina Lotar, Marion Bibbo, Bellis Marina Hedman and many, many more —  from Emanuelle in America, La Pretora, Play Motel and plenty of adult films (she was one of the first Italian actresses to appear in porn) appears.

If this looks way better than it should, despite being shot all in the same room even though they claim it’s all over the world, because Enrico Biribicchi shot it. He lent his skills to plenty socially unredeeming movies, including The Return of the Exorcist, Emanuelle in America, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals, Buio Omega, Erotic Nights of the Living Dead and Porno Holocaust. He was also the cinematographer for Antropophagus.

This being a Mattei movie, rest assured that plenty of recycled footage appears. There’s some stuff from several Erwin C. Dietrich movies, some of Jess Franco’s Mondo Erotico and even stuff from D’Amato’s Eva Nera*.

Notti Porno nel Mondo is absolutely ridiculous, a movie that I would never recommend to anyone but absolute maniacs with no taste whatsoever. If you read this far, that’s probably you.

*Thanks to Adrian on Letterboxd for figuring out where those scenes came from.

Dangerous Attraction tells the story of Carlo Monti (Gabriele Gori, The Bronx Executioner), a graduate student who wants to discover why his mother mysteriously died and get to know if his father — who was an Italian exploitation director — was involved. And who better to tell the tale of the foibles and vices of the scummy side of the Italian film industry than Pierre Le Blanc, who we all know is none other than Bruno Mattei?

Carlo discovers his father’s home, which is packed with trunks filled with old scripts and posters of his films. It’s also where he meets Emma (Monica Carpanese, Madness), who claims to be his sister yet still becomes incredibly attractive to our hero.

This film finds itself — like most of the direct-to-video erotic thrillers released in the 90s — between the softcore film and the giallo. This has an intriguing theme — who is Carlo’s father, why did he potentially kill his mother in a car accident and, this being an Italian movie, will he sleep with his half-sister — to keep things moving across 88 minutes.

As for Carlo’s father, he’s played by David Warbeck, a veteran of Italian film, thanks to appearances in The Beyond, The Ark of the Sun God, Miami Golem, Ratman, Domino and Fatal Frames. It was pretty great to see — for me — a major name show up in one of Mattei’s late period films.

Here’s hoping someone — Severin, one would assume — gets all of these 90s Mattei movies out sooner or later. If we can enjoy a gorgeous version of Fulci’s The Devil’s Honey, why not Attrazione Pericolosa?

Alex Noyer made the documentary 808, which was all about the Roland TR-808, the drum machine that has been at the root of so much hip hop and pop music. He also wrote and directed a short called Conductor, which was about a music engineer who helps a young musician create music for a once-in-lifetime competition.

Inspired by that film, Noyer has created Sound of Violence, which is an incredibly unique take on the slasher. It’s the tale of Alexis Reeves (Jasmin Savoy Brown), who was deaf until witnessing the murder of her family when she was ten years old. This devastating event awakened her synesthetic abilities and a musical ability that is fueled by the literal sound of violence.

While she works on her career as a teacher and enjoys a loving relationship with Marie (Lili Simmons), she keeps everyone unaware of the dark secrets behind her musical gifts. Yet when faced with the prospect of losing her hearing again, she’ll do anything to stop that from happening.

Alexis can see colors inside music thanks to the neurological condition synesthesia, which she first discovered when she murdered her brutal father as a child. Now, she continues enjoying those swirls of color due to her musical collages of fighting children, mayhem and pain. Yet once you get addicted to a song or to creating them, you can’t stop. You need a bigger high. And Alexis is headed down a path that may doom anyone close to her.

Sure, it may go over the top when Alexis discovers how to create all manner of complex torture devices that tie into her ability to compose music while tearing human beings to shreds. Yet in a time when most streaming slashers seem content to toss some synth music and 80s clothes on while replaying the same bad cliches of the end of the genre’s best years and proclaiming themselves as bold throwbacks.

This is a high concept movie with acid trip visuals and no small shortage of gore all united to create one of the most unique slashers the form has seen in decades. It’s not perfect, but it feels like a dramatic step forward and I can’t wait to see what Noyer creates next.

Sound of Violence will debut on cable and digital VOD May 21 from Gravitas Ventures.

After working with Ninì Grassia on three films for the former adult actress turned mainstream actress Ramba AKA Malù AKA Ileana Carisio with no credit, Bruno Mattei worked again with Grassia — who co-wrote the screenplay and the music — on this film.

Paolo and Barbara Roversi (Antonio Zequila, who appeared in several of Mattei’s 90s erotic thrillers, and Gala Orlova, who was in Joe D’Amato’s Instinct and Pasquale Fanetti’s Lady Chatterley’s Passions 2: Julie’s Secret) have moved to the villa of Floriana (Monica Carpanese, Madness), a young rich girl who obsessed with dolls, instantly recalling the themes of many giallo.

Barbara is an actress and Paolo a businessman, but the stress of their lives has gotten to both of them. They plan an angle where they’ll become friends with Floriana and convince her to commit a crime, then blackmail her. The crime? Murdering Paolo, who will fake his death and then, they’ll take the strange woman’s collection of diamonds.

But you know how these erotic thrillers go.

This was produced at the same time as Omicidio al Telefono and Mattei claimed that he has never seen the edited versions of either film, as his contract only involved directing. He did, however, direct this under his most famous other name, Vincent Dawn.

However, he had issues with the actors, in particular Zequila, of whom he said, “He had to say a very ordinary line, “Women never keep their mouths shut .” He couldn’t say it and kept repeating variations on the line like, “women keep their mouths shut” and “women have their mouths shut” until at a certain point, I said to him, “I am writing this down for you on a piece of paper!””

Delilah Doom — whose entrance music is “Let’s Go To The Mall” by Robin Sparkles– is the Queen of Aerobic Style and a lover of jazzercise.

Shelly Martinez was Salinas in TNA and Ariel in the WWE version ECW, as well as a contestant on  The Search for the Next Elvira and the official Hollywood event correspondent and hostess for the horror news website MoreHorror.com.

“The Bully Buster” Keta Meggett came to wrestling from the world of acting and has used it to increase her self-esteem.

Katarina Leigh Waters was known as the occult character Winter in TNA and Katie Lea Burchill in WWE. She also appeared in a series of DVDs from Scorpion Releasing, introducing several movies as part of Katarina’s Nightmare Theater. 

All four women are part of Jeremy Norrie’s (Don’t Call Me Bigfoot, Why We Fight) The Other Side of the RIng, which tells their stores about being a woman in the world of wrestling. I think if you’re a superfan of groups like RISE and Shimmer, you’ll get a lot out of this movie. You’re not going to learn anything groundbreaking, but it’s interesting to see where the women came from and how hard they’re worked for their position.

You can watch this now on Tubi.

Murder on the Phone finds a homicidal clown named Codino who is obsessed with killing the women of phone sex lines. If you say, “That sounds a lot like the plot of 1989’s Out of the Dark,” well, perhaps Bruno Mattei — using the name Frank Klox — would like you to know that that movie stole the giallo from his homeland.

Two policewomen, Lorena Baldini (Carla Salerno, who also appears in Tinto Brass’ Paprika and Mattei’s Legittima Vendetta) and Consuela Calani (Stefania Mega, who was the runner-up for Miss Italy 1989 annd was also in Legittima Vendetta, leading me to believe that in true Mattei style they were shot at the same time), are trying to find out who the killer is, which mainly means that they start working at the phone sex line and hang out at an “erotic disco.” This is beyond movie logic. This is softcore giallo erotic thriller movie logic.

While disco dancing, they pick up men with the ulterior motive of taking fingerprints from their cocktail glasses. Also, because Lorena is the consummate professional — which let’s face it, the bar for being a giallo cop is very low — she begins dating two of the men she meets, Massimo Alberici (Antonio Zequila, who worked with Mattei on Body and Soul, Dangerous Attraction, Madness, both Belle da Morire movies and, you guessed it, Legittima Vendetta) and Dante Ranieri (Pascal Persiano, Demons 2, Paganini Horror).

The partners start to argue because Massimo is one of their suspects and Consuelo has somewhat of a level head, arguing that her fellow cop could be crashing the custard truck with a killer. There are some giallo red herrings, as Lorena finds some record albums in his house that she knows came from the crime scenes. She goes as far as to steal her lover’s personal papers to learn more about him. And oh yeah, remember what I said about Consuelo being professional? Well, she ends up sleeping with one of her phone sex clients, which I assume is something that has never happened outside of the scope of movies that Cinemax plays after 1 AM. Well, right after she gets finished loading the clown in the cannon, the killer clown finds her right outside the young man’s hallway and takes her out of the picture.

This takes our heroine out of the arms of Massimo and into the embrace of Dante, who go figure, starts acting like Ron Silver in Blue Steel, becoming obsessed with her gun until she kills him. It’s a happy ending, because in the Italian giallo police department, there’s no such thing as internal affairs or being held accountable for your shoddy policework.

Mattei directed this movie for Ninì Grassia, who he had also directed three mainstream films starring Ileana “Ramba” Carusio, an adult star who was so popular that she had her own series of comic books.

Originally called The Killer…Is On the Phone, Mattei disliked this movie so much that he pretty much walked away from it, using the Frank Klok name for the one and only time instead of one of his more well-known aliases like Vincent Dawn or Pierre Le Blanc.

You have no idea how much work I put into finding this movie. I’d like to think it was worth it, because finding one more Mattei film — actually this led me to three more of the films he did with Nini Grassia! — is like discovering one more gift that was forgotten in your Christmas stocking.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Man, Bruno sure liked making zombie movies. Who can blame him? They sell ad we’re still talking about them! This review originally ran on June 12, 2018.

Director Claudio Fragasso refers to this film as the “last gasp” of Italian zombie movies. If you’re expecting Zombi, well, let’s not forget the movies that Claudio has blessed us with, both by himself and with Bruno Mattei: Beyond Darkness/La Casa 5, Troll 2, RoboWar, Rats: Night of Terror, The Other Hell and Shocking Dark.

The movie starts as researchers discover that the natives are practicing voodoo, so they kill the priest, who places a curse that brings the dead back to life before he dies. Only a young girl named Jenny (soon to be played by Candice Daly, Liquid Dreams) survives thanks to an enchanted necklace her parents gave her.

Years later, she returns to the island to find out exactly what happened. And she isn’t alone — she’s brought a gang of mercs with her. There’s Tommy (Don “The Dragon” Wilson!), Dan (Jim Gaines, American Ninja), Rod and Louise, Rod’s girlfriend. And then there are also some hikers — Chuck (played by 80’s gay porn star Jeff Stryker), David (Massimo Vanni/Alex McBride, who is in a ton of Italian exploitation as an actor and stuntman) and Mad — who have found the underground temple where the curse was originally created.

Of course, they bring the curse back and David is eaten and Mad killed. Rod soon gets bitten and ends up killing his girlfriend. David comes back and kills Dan. Seriously, our cast is pretty much cannon fodder. Tommy volunteers to stay behind and blow the base up to take out the zombies as Jenny and Chuck run back to the cave.

There, Chuck is attacked and killed by zombies while Jenny removes her protective necklace and becomes a super zombie that can rip out its own eyeball and survive. And then, Fulci style, the movie just ends.

The cave set looks a ton like the sets of City of the Living Dead. And the movie really jumps all over the place. But does any other zombie movie have as catchy a theme song as this? Alright, does any zombie movie not called Return of the Living Dead have a song this good?

Severin has the definitive release of this, complete with interviews with Daly (recorded before she died in 2004), Stryker, Fragasso and Drudi. You even get a CD of the soundtrack. What are you waiting for?

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on our site on June 7, 2018. I absolutely love this ridiculous movie to the surprise of no one.

“Venice before the year 2000. Squares, museums and churches. Tourists crowd the streets. Venice is threatened by the high tide. The seaweed is killing the oxygen in the waters and the putrid waters are corroding the foundations of the city. This is Venice today. What will happen tomorrow?”

Say what you will about Bruno Mattei, but the dude knows how to grab you from the first frame of travelogue footage!

The film starts in a control room, where a bunch of dudes in grey and yellow futuristic jumpsuits watch a research base and most of Venice fall into chaos, as one guy keeps screaming that there are mutants everywhere. There are no survivors, just chunks of videotape that they watch.

Basically, if this feels more like Aliens than the Terminator rip-off you were expecting, buckle the fuck up. While this movie was released as Terminator 2, Mattei and his cohorts Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi, who activated their Wonder Twin powers of insanity to create Troll 2, refuse to stop at covering one film. Oh no — this movie is too strange for that.

They decide to assemble a team — the Mega Force! — to investigate and they bring Sara, a scientist, along to find the diary that has the answers to this breakout. Samuel Fuller from the Tubular Corporation asks to come along, just like Bishop. The fact that two of the members of the team are Geretta Geretta and Tony Lombardo from Rats: The Night of Terror are all the reason I needed to purchase this. The even more amazing fact that Geretta is playing a tribute version of Vasquez from Aliens is the icing on this slice of exploitation tiramisu.

Geretta’s first line is “Alright you bunch of pussies, I’m back and I’m kicking ass!” Then, we watch one of the kinda sorta Space Marines on Operation: Delta Venice practice his nunchakus with his back to the camera. Come on dude — work the hard cam. Also: the Mega Force’s base looks like a high school locker room. Also also: they are not Megaforce.

There’s a member of the Mega Force that has long blonde hair and wears Oakley glasses and a red bandana. I love him already. Geretta’s character, Koster, then starts to yell about Italians being allowed on the mission and gets into a racially motivated fight with another crew member. Mega Force! Get it together!

If you haven’t picked it up yet, I love this fucking movie. This is why I watch Italian low budget genre films all wrapped up in one messy package. The acting is either way too intense or has stilted line readings, sometimes within the same sentence. The costumes are laughable. And the action is everything you wish there was more of in other films without pesky things like character development and a plot to get in the way.

Every time I worry that I’ll never find a film like 2019: After the Fall of New York or 1990: The Bronx Warriors, Italian filmmakers surprise me with something wonderful. All you need are some vests, bike helmets and soccer pads and a fancy synth score and you have a futuristic army ready to do battle with whatever the hell the bad guys in this movie are.

The Mega Force finds a bunch of people inside the alien eggs, but those people beg to be killed before grabbing and choking Koster. Soon, the aliens or mutants or whatever they are decide to throw people around and kill everything in their path. If you love movies where people fall to their deaths, this should be in your collection.

If you thought there wouldn’t be a Newt character, you aren’t watching much Italian cinema. Yep — in the midst of all this craziness, a small child has survived.

The best scene in the film has the soldiers all trapped in a room and the scientist vainly trying to open the door by pushing the left button. Clearly, there is a button on the right, too. She ignores this and keeps jamming the left button like someone trying to make the elevator get there faster. Finally, after screaming, monsters blowing up and much death, someone finally tells this brilliant scientist to just push the button on the right. Holy shit — this movie is awesome.

I have learned many things from this movie. No matter what language you speak, your scream sounds pretty much universal. You can fire a Franchi SPAS-12 one-handed and accurately hit a target. And while I previously was taught that seaweed is really algae and algae helps provide much of the Earth’s oxygen, in the world of this film this is not true. Basically — fuck science!

I wonder — was Samuel Fuller named for the director? Why is Venice the center of the world? And why, when I knew this was also called Terminator 2, was I so surprised and elated that the Bishop character was also a Terminator?

Finally, the ending — if you think that they’re not gonna get time travel somewhere in this wedding soup…just wow.

If you come to a party at my house in the next few months, chances are that you will be forced to watch this movie while I scream like a maniac and laugh my ass off. You have no choice but to comply.

Of course, Severin put this out. Grab one now — don’t delay! You can also watch this on Tubi.

With a title that translates as Three Fish, A Cat in the Hot Bed, perhaps it’s best that this Bruno Mattei — using his David Graham name — movie was retitled Three for One when it came out in the U.S. And by came out, I assume it played late night cable* and was on the “mature, but not adult” shelves in mom and pop video stores.

As written by Clyde Anderson — come on, we know it’s you, Claudio Fragasso — this movie makes the astounding move of copying The Girl Most Likely To… and replacing all the casual murder with casual sex.

Three childhood friends all grown up — Lou Sambello (Robert La Brosse, who went from being in Deep Blood and 11 Days 11 Nights Part 3 to the Coen’s Miller’s Crossing, which is pretty astounding when you think about it), Miles Gribbin (Jason Saucier, Hitcher in the Dark) and Ben Liknen (Richard Sume, who was also in two Joe D’Amato movies, High Finance Woman and Blue Angel Cafe) — all fall for the same woman, who just so happens to be the geeky girl that they all hated back in high school.

Using the names Bunny, Katy and Lauren, she appears as each of their dream girl, whether that’s an exhibitionistic stripper, a raven-hued femme fatale or a bookish nerd hiding a gorgeous face behind those glasses. All of these roles — and the ridiculously made-up geek persona — are all played by Martina Castel, who actually really excels at the multitude of roles she plays and is decent at the comedy, too. Sadly, this would be the only movie she’d make.

She reveals to them that she’s really the girl they all laughed at, Kerry Grant, before deciding that she’ll take all of them. A woman in charge of her sexuality in an Italian softcore movie? Who knew 1990 could be so open-minded?

Of Mattei’s late-period softcore films, this is the most polished and the one that feels the most joyous. The comedy helps and the fact that it’s basically a movie made up of montages helps the language and culture barriers that usually hinder his work. Let’s hope this gets a blu ray release some day.

*According to one IMDB reviewer, it played Joe Bob Briggs’ Joe Bob’s Drive-in Theater!

Remember Christiane F.? Hanna D. could be her Italian cousin, but one who doesn’t come from a place of true story but from a not-so-distant exploitation place. Where Christiane’s story served to warn others — and got all manner of young girls across Europe to head off to the places in the movie and do drugs — Hanna’s odyssey is one meant to titillate.

Yes, Hanna (Ann-Gisel Glass, who was also in Rats: The Night of Terror) has no issue using her body to either make old men uncomfortable or to make money. Her mother (Karin Schubert, Emanuele Around the World) mainly is in her life to argue with her and to get drunk. So is it any wonder that she descends into a world of drugs and depravity?

This was directed by Rino Di Silvestro, whose oeuvre is filled with the type of repellant stuff that I put into my eye veins, just like the frankly disturbing as fuck scene in this movie where someone injects junk directly under their eyeball, the kind of magical trash that had to make Lucio Fulci shout, “Che è un gioco!” You may know Di Silvestro from making Italy’s first women in prison movie, Women in Cell Block 7, as well as Deported Women of the SS Special Section and Werewolf Woman.

Di Silvestro didn’t finish this movie, but his editor did. That man’s name? Bruno Mattei, who knows all about making films that shock, repulse and bring great joy to people who wonder aloud, “You know, I wonder why no one has ever made a movie where someone evacuates drugs out of their rectums immediately followed by someone gobbing it down?”

If you’re that person, get help. And get Hanna D. – La ragazza del Vondel Park, which is the motion picture you’ve been looking for.