The Killers Club is a web series where nature and nurture clash as Dr. Welles (Steven Bernstein) tracks down and kidnaps five serial killers, renames them by number and attempts to cute their urges by group therapy.
James Rufous came up with the concept and the first three 10-15 minute episodes were written and co-directed by Michael. Yeah, that’s his full name.
It’s an interesting concept and well made. The first three episodes are available on the YouTube channel and we’ve attached the first one below for you to check out.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally wrote about this movie on February 22, 2018. We’ve added to that original article in this revision for our Mill Creek month.
Also known as La Montagna del Dio Cannibale, Slave of the Cannibal Godand Prisoner of the Cannibal God, don’t be fooled by the pedigree of having big stars like Ursula Andress and Stacy Keach. This film may seem restrained at first, but it goes absolutely insane by the final ten minutes. I mean, when has Sergio Martino (All the Colors of the Dark, Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) ever steered us wrong?
Susan Stevenson (Andress, the original Bond girl) is looking for her husband Henry, an anthropologist who has gone missing in the jungles of New Guinea. Along with her brother Arthur and Professor Edward Foster (Keach), they travel to the mountain Ra Ra Me, a cursed place where the authorities will not allow expeditions.
Of course, they go there. What did you expect? They’re stupid white people. The jungle thanks them with attacks from spiders, snakes and alligators. And then Manolo (Claudio Cassinelli, What Have They Done to Your Daughters?), a jungle guide, joins their party.
Bad idea. Arthur has sex with one of the native girls, who is already married, but a cannibal attacks and kills both the husband and wife. A missionary makes them leave, as they have brought nothing but sin, adultery and death to his village. Don’t fuck in the woods. And don’t bring your Western values to the jungle.
It turns out that none of their reasons for coming to the island are altruistic. Susan and Arthur have no interest in finding her husband, but are instead looking for uranium deposits. Foster is there just to find the tribe of cannibals who had taken him captive in the past so he can wipe them off the face of the earth.
On the way, a waterfall takes Foster after Arthur doesn’t save him. And they reach the mountain, which isn’t just a uranium mine. It’s made from uranium. And how do we know that? Well, Susan’s husband’s body is being worshipped as a god because the Geiger counter he had keeps ticking, like a heartbeat.
At this point, the film rewards you by going completely off the rails, descending into chaos. A native attacks Susan, but is stopped by the tribe and castrated, then his penis is cooked and eaten. Another villager has sex with a giant pig. Meanwhile, the drums build in a hypnotic rhythm as another female villager masturbates (this is from the “director’s special selection” version, there are several cuts of the film). As this happens, Susan is stripped and smeared with orange honey by two naked female cannibals before being fed her own brother. Manolo is tortured. It feels like a nightmare you can’t wake up from, one of the only moments where the Martino who delivered a quick succession of giallo a decade or so before rears his artistic head.
Then, it’s over, with Manolo and Susan escaping. I mean, one would think that there would be years of therapy after this. But I don’t know. Perhaps she can get over this easier than most.
This isn’t a great movie. It might not even be good. It is entertaining for the last section, but there’s also the problematic issue of animal torture in the film — a monkey is slowly eaten by a snake and lizard being cut apart. Martino claims he tacked on these scenes at the distributor’s insistence. I guess the cannibal audience — an outgrowth of the audience for mondo films — needed more than just Ursula’s breasts and a dummy of Keach getting killed for their kicks.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally had this movie on the site on October 26, 2019. As we review the Mill Creek set, this was part of it. Its very worthy of your time, so read up and get it yourself. Then maybe you’d like to share your feelings on this one!
After seeing Joe Bob Briggs “How Rednecks Saved Hollywood,” the entire B&S About Movies team mobilize and celebrated these films, from a Letterboxd list to making our own picks for top 70’s good ol’ boys movies. But to be honest, we watched so many of these movies, where would we find something new to answer the Scarecrow Challenge for one more day?
Canada, with your tax shelters and movies that are far north of odd, remains our constant bastion and perhaps place to run to after next November.
Director Peter Carter also made a movie called High-Ballin’ and it wasn’t a porno, instead a trucking film, so we need to respect the artist coming in.
Five doctors go on vacation deep in the Northern Ontario wilderness. Every year, one of them gets to pick where they go and this time, it’s D.J. who gets to be travel agent. He takes the guys to the Cauldron of the Moon, which was a practical location that had been created by a fire a few years earlier.
According to the natives, this is where the earth collided with the moon and it hsould be a place of magic, but it’s really just a place for the doctors to get drunk and argue about their lives, their ethics and, well, just argue.
As our guys wake up for another day of cutting up, they end up getting cut up in a much different way. That’s because everyone’s boots have been stolen. I guess these guys never listened to Iron Maiden or cowboy lore.
D.J. had said, time and again, being a backup pair of boots, and he ended up being the only one that did so. That means he has to go back alone through he dangerous woods and bring back four pairs of boots. As the guys wait for their friend, they’re soon confronted by the carcass of a dead deer before they also discover a severed head. That’s a real dead deer, by the way, in case you think the Italians are the only ones willing to sicken you with autentic snuffed out animals on celluloid.
Harry (Hal Holbrook) takes charge, but it seems as if the past — and all the mistakes with it — have come back to haunt the rest of the group.
While this movie was obviously inspired by Deliverance, it’s also a proto-slasher, with a killer setting traps in the woods that predates the work of Cropsey, Madman Marz and Pamela Vorhees’ little man.
You have a lot of options if you want to see this movie. You can watch this on the Internet Archive for free. Or you can allow our friends at Mill Creek to help with either their Drive-In Movie Classics: 50 Movie Pack or Horror Classics: 100 Movie Pack. However, the best version is available from Ronin Flix, who have the Scorpion Releasing blu ray re-release of this.
There was a second Universal horror cycle after the Karloff and Lugosi monsters, even if they never get discussed any longer. And so much of it was based around one man, Rondo Hatton.
Well, Sherlock Holmes too. We’ll get to that.
Hatton was once a sportswriter for The Tampa Tribune and a World War I veteran, but then acromegaly distorted the shape of his head, face and extremities, giving him a unique look that made him a livings special effect. In fact, the studio system tried to play his looks up as an even worse deformity, stating that he’d received elephantiasis after exposure to German mustard gas attack during the war.
After playing the Hoxton Creeper in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film The Pearl of Death, a series of Creeper films was planned. Sadly, House of Horrors and The Brute Man were released after his death, the result of shis acromegalic condition.
Back to the master detective.
The second character spun off from a Holmes film was The Spider Woman, who originally appeared in Sherlock Holmes and the Spider Woman. Again, like Hatton, Gale Sondergaard didn’t need much makeup to achieve her fame as a dangerous and evil woman.
In fact, after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, MGM considered having the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz played as a glamorous villainess, much like Snow White’s evil stepmother. They did two screen tests with Sondergaard in the traditional witch look and the more out there sexy style. After the decision was made to go with the ugly wicked witch, Sondergaard was reluctant to wear the disfiguring makeup, so she stepped away from the role which went to Margaret Hamilton.
Sondergaard also played the evil humanized cat Tylette in The Blue Bird — 20th Century Fox’s answer to Oz — as well as the sinister wife in The Letter.
So yes, back once again to Holmes. After playing the villain in one of the long series of Sherlock movies, Sondergaard would play the sinister Spider Woman again in an unrelated sequel. In the first movie, she was known as Adrea Spedding but now she’s the wealthy, blind and mysterious Zenobia Dollard.
Jean (Brenda Joyce, who played Jane in several Tarzan films) is hired as Zenobia’s caretaker, a job with a definite shelf life as all of the previous caretakers have vanished. Perhaps that’s because at night, Zeonbia’servantnt (yep, Rondo Hatton) harvests her blood while she sleeps a drugged sleep, mixing her plasma with that of her ancestors and a little bit of spider venom — sounds like one of my cocktails — to make a death serum. Oh yeah — he has blood drinking plants to help him with his experiment!
At just 59 minutes and with direction by non-horror fan Arthur Lubin, this film couldn’t catch on the same way Universal’s past horror successes did. Yet it’s still astounding that they attempted to start a new series, much less one with a female antagonist. That said, this did run quite often on TV, as it was part of the original Universal Shock Theater package.
Kino Lorber’s new blu ray of The Soider Woman Strikes has a great looking 2K remaster of the film, commentary by film historians Tom Weaver and David Schecter, trailers and Misteress of Menace and Murder: Making The Spider Woman Strikes Back, a new documentary featuring interviews with C. Courtney Joyner, Rick Baker and Fred Olen Ray. Much like all of their latest releases, Kino really knows how to find that exact movie that you suddently discover that your collection is missing. You can get it directly from Kino Lorber.
We’re only showing one movie this Saturday at 11 PM EST. Yet what a movie it is! The Sentinel is the late 70s Catholic Satanic freakout you never knew you wanted! Meet us on the Groovy Doom Facebook or YouTube page for ads, cocktail recipes and lots of fun discussions about the movie. As for watching the film, it’s on Tubi.
When a viral video of Bigfoot emerges, a once-popular influencer goes on a mission to film a video with the creature and get famous again, which really seems like this should be something that really happens.
An improvised film made in eight days and shot on location in the Redwoods and Los Angeles, this movie is all about getting likes and follows, no matter how close to ending your life you have to get.
Made by creative duo Sam Milman and Peter Vass, there’s a good chance that the like and submit buttons may not be the only thing that gets smashed. Here’s to an entire gaggle of influencers trying to hunt down the Jersey Devil, White Thang, the Fouke Monster, Altamaha-ha, Sharlie, Champy, the Loveland Frogmen, Taku-He and the Beast of Bray Road.
Bigfoot Famous is available from Gravitas Ventures.
What brings the hopeful to Hollywood? For a young rapper, it’s the chance to be a star. And for the apartment manager that he becomes friends with, those dreams are twenty years in the past.
Reggie (Ryan Silva, who also wrote and directed this) and his girlfriend Maya (Lora Lee) have lucked out and got a place from Frank (Freddy Andreiuci), who seems like a nice enough guy other than, you know, saying the worst word you can to a young black couple.
But when the young couple gets in a fight, Reggie has no one in Los Angeles to spend time with other than the old man that runs the place. Of course, they end up bonding — you can see that coming from the first scene. But this film is so natural and their conversations so intriguing that watching this film becomes a pleasure.
Unless I was sent this film, I probably wouldn’t have watched it. I’m glad that I did, because it was well-made and was the perfect movie for the mood I was in.
Oh, how I love Italian sci-fi, horror and adventure flicks — in this case, a cross-pollination of pirate and women-in-prison flicks — as women slop around the 19th century island sands and jungles in formal wear; a land where make-up never runs or smudges and nary a bead of sweat drips from their perfectly-shaped brows. Oh, and they’re all (implied) lesbians . . . and nary a breast or triangle-of-death shot, appears. But those French-period military uniforms and gowns are impressive. . . . Did Paul Naschy make this movie? If you’ve seen his works Panic Beats and Horror Rises from the Tomb, you know what we mean.
The star of this slave-woman-panning-for-gold tallywacking is U.S. TV western star Guy Madison who starred as “U.S. Marshall James Butler” for seven seasons on The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok. But B-Movie stalwarts will remember Guy best for his pre-television, early ’50s westerns Massacre River, Drums in the Deep South, and The Charge at Feather River. Then there’s the sci-fi and horror classics (well, they are to me) On the Threshold of Space and The Beast of Hollow Mountain, made during his television series’ hiatuses.
Then, as we’ve discussed many times at B&S About Movies: the actors of the 1950s that we loved — such as Gordon Mitchell and Richard Harrison (Three Men on Fire) — saw their careers cool into the acceptance of European audiences. For Guy Madison, as with Mitchell and Harrison: the sword-and-sandal epics, beckoned. So, after knocking out Slave of Rome and Sword of the Conqueror — and before knocking out films for the Italian film industry in every Neapolitan-ripped off genre imaginable — such as Executioner of Venice from my UHF-TV days — as only the Italians can finance, Guy found himself on a boat (okay, well, he shows up, later, as the camp’s new administrator) transporting scantily-clad women to France’s famed Devil’s Island penal colony off the coast of South America.
If you know your Nazisploitation* films (and we know you do), Third Reich-styled chaos, ensues, — only not as violently or sleazy — with the females forced as mining slave labor under the boot of corrupt commandants and guards. Then in steps Guy’s “new sheriff in town” who’s going to clean up the camp’s corruption. Yeah, he falls in love with a prisoner as he catches a bit of gold fever.
Yeah, Domenico Paolella, who directs — and cranked out 40-plus films between 1940 to 1979 (I’ll always remember his 1977, Death Wish-cum-Dirty Harry romp, Stunt Squad via the VHS ’80s) gets the history all wrong, and the women slopping through dirtless, rubbery swamps — only to remain perpetually stunning throughout — is pretty dumb. Well, at least we have Michèle Mercier who, while getting her start with drek like this, thanks to her leading role in the later, three-film Angélique series, rose to instant stardom and rivaled Bridgette Bardot for our testosterone-beating hearts.
Alas, a remake with Shannon Tweed and Christopher Lee was never meant to be.
Mill Creek’s copy on the Drive-In Classics set is, needless to say, pretty rough. At least it scratches another (again, G-rated mild) “women in prison” flick off your completists list. During the UHF-TV ’70s, when you’re stuck with braces and acne and couldn’t part with your Molly Hatchet concert shirt, the divine Ms. Mercier — under threat of whippings, molestation, and lechery — was a date for a Friday Night fantasy.
We found two clean rips on You Tube, here and here.
EDITOR’S NOTE: We originally featured Nothing Underneath and Too Beautiful to Die on June 17, 2020 and December 28, 2017. We’re beyond thrilled that Vinegar Syndrome is releasing these on an amazing double blu ray set, as we need more 80s giallo to come out in the U.S.! Here’s to someday getting Obsession: A Taste for Fear in the same format soon!
Vinegar Syndrome has amazingly released both of these films on a double disk set, making them look way more gorgeous than the battered bootlegs I’ve relied on for years. There are two commentary tracks for Nothing Underneath (The Hysteria Continues! and Rachael Nesbit) along with interviews with screenwriters Enrico Vanzina and Franco Ferrini, composer Pino Donaggio and actor Tom Schanley. Too Beautiful to Die has a commentary by Nesbit and an interview with writer/director Dario Piana, as well as storyboards for an alternate ending and deleted scenes.
Nothing Underneath (1985): I really like 1988’s Too Beautiful to Die, a movie that was sold as a sequel to this movie. They don’t have much to do with one another, but when has that ever stopped the Italian exploitation industry?
A serial killer roams the city of Milan, dispatching gorgeous models with the flash of his scissors. Meanwhile, Yellowstone Park ranger Bob Crane senses that his sister needs him, so he flies across the world to interact with the rich and famous. Can he save her? Will he be targeted by the killer? Will Donald Pleasence ever say no to a movie?
The first time I saw this, I didn’t like it all that much as the sequel is just so strong. But after some rewatches, I’ve come to appreciate it, as this is a movie that features the man who was Loomis eating a meal at the Wendy’s salad bar.
Too Beautiful to Die (1988): I came across this film on YouTube and had no idea what I’d be watching. I’d give it five minutes and then be done with it, I said. And then I realized that the film was nearly over and I’d been quite interested in the proceedings. Life’s funny like that.
Written and directed by Dario Piana, this sequel to Nothing Underneathis the only giallo I’ve seen that has both Huey Lewis and the News and Frankie Goes to Hollywood (you got close, Body Double) on the soundtrack. A major point of the film is that the models are trying to put together a video for Frankie’s “Warriors of the Wasteland!”
Let me see if I can summarize this one quickly for you. A fashion agency is shooting videos that feel very BDSM and feature really long, intricate daggers. Those models are all prostitutes, except for one, who won’t give in and have sex with an old man in a whirlpool, so everyone rapes and kills her. Her car goes off a cliff, but an autopsy proves that she was shot in the head first. That said — everyone who was there starts getting killed, one by one.
Some of the death scenes are really well shot and the murder weapon is quite insane looking. One of the murders, with a model falling off a large building into water, looks particularly good.
BONUS!
Sotto il vestito niente – L’ultima sfilata (2011): There’s a goofy part of me that loves Nothing Underneath and Too Beautiful to Die because they’re trying to keep the giallo alive in the sad dry years of the mid 80s before everyone realized that they could make money making Basic Instinct and Cinemax After Dark clones because hey, those movies are just giallo with less style and verve.
I have no idea want this other than me, much less greenlit it and gave them the kind of budget that let them shoot all over Europe, have a great look and even get Lady Gaga on the soundtrack. Then again, Too Beautiful had Huey Lewis and the News, Toto and Frankie Goes to Hollywood while Nothing Underneath had Murray Head and Gloria Gaynor, so there you go.
Rest in peace, Carlo Vanzina. You made two fashion gialli and they’re both ridiculous and I love them. Shout out to Dario Piana, who went from making Too Beautiful to directing The Death of Ian Stone and a Lost Boys direct to video sequel. Please come back to giallo and make another movie with a ridiculous sword weapon.
Anyways, let’s get to this one. The first big surprise is that Richard E. Grant is in this. He plays stylist Federico Marinoni, who is enjoying big success at the Milan Fashion Festival along with his partner Max Liverani and their top model Alexandra Larsson. But there ends up being a murder, the wrong people see the bodies and the intrigue begins.
This isn’t part of the Vinegar Syndrome release of the first two films, so I had to get a non-subbed version off a Russian site that had a Soviet translator screaming the dialogue over the Italian soundtrack, which is a very disorienting way to enjoy cinema.
Oh, Brian Trenchard-Smith, how do we at B&S About Movies love thee? Let us count the reviews. . . .
The rocking, magical majesty of Stunt Rock (your amazing, feature film debut as both writer and director that leaves us jumpin’ off the walls in glee), your apoc-game show shenanigans of Turkey Shoot, your giving the future Ms. Tom Cruise her big break in the U.S. cable favorite BMX Bandits, the apoc-fuckery of Dead End Drive-In, and not one, but two Leprechaun flicks: both 3 and 4! Then you went Trinity Broadcasting-biblical on our asses with Megiddo: The Omega Code 2. Even when you team up to produce with Nico Mastorakis for Bloodline, our VHS-pumpin’ heart belongs to you. Night of the Demons 2? Others scoffed, but we were there, for you, oh, Brian.
So, when Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger issued the disgruntled war veteran challenge, you answered the call. And we answered your call, in kind. Sigh . . . for we only wish the programmers at Mill Creek planned ahead and also included your second “Rambo”: The Siege of Firebase Gloria (1988). Look at that cast, headed by the B-Movie, direct-to-video delights of Wings Hauser and R. Lee Ermey! So what if you shot it near the same locations where Return from the River Kwai (1989) was being shot, so you could pinch stock battle scenes from that production. You make the Philippines work-like-Vietnam like no one can, Brian.
“Happy, Happy Halloween! Silver Shamrock!”Yes. The villains run around in Halloween masks/image courtesy of VHS Collector.com.
Trenchard-Smith’s road to Ramboness begins with prolific Australian stunt man Peter West. West cooked up a Down Under version of the better-known American counterparts as Jason Blade (fellow stunt man Edward John Stazak*): a martial-arts expert who launches an all-out war against a drug-running enterprise responsible for the death of his partner. Okay, well, this isn’t exactly a war-oriented movie, but closer to the vengeful, rogue cops of Sly’s Cobra (1986) and Arnie’s Red Heat (1988), but you get the idea.
So Jason Blade, and his love interest, Linda (Linda Megier; herself a stunt woman, also in her acting debut), have risen to the martial arts-levels to be inducted into the ancient “Order of the Panthers,” a secret crime fighting organization. During their first mission: Linda dies. The authorities — on the take and powerless — won’t take down the bad guys, so Blade has to go, well, Stallone, well, Chan, well, Van Damme on their asses.
For the most-discriminating Brian Trenchard-Smith fan.**
Sadly, well . . . okay, look: we’re partial to Trenchard-Smith’s works, but we’re not ranting to our levels of boyish glee for his previous work, here. The proceeding are all very direct-to-video, B-Movie weak (in the U.S.; this was a theatrical in Australia), rife with all of the hand-to-hand combat you can handle — Stazak even breaks out the Jackie Chan broom handle whoop ass. So, while it’s all B-Movie pedestrian and Stazak’s script is a cut-n-paste job of many, better-known Jean-Claude Van Damme flicks, Trenchard-Smith does keep it moving, so the chop-socky tomfoolery is certainly not boring to the point of you wanting to fast-forwarding through it or skipping-without-finishing-it to the next film on the Mill Creek box set. Hey, it’s a hell of a lot better than a Hulk Hogan or any WWF-backed action flick from the ’80s. . . .
“How could you leave out Frog Dreaming?!?” fellow WordPresser, Antonio from cultcutz.com, shouts with glee.
“The same way I forgot Paris Jefferson’s (three) aerobic dance numbers in the gym while Jason Blade works out. And the total clip job of John Saxon’s big, ending fight scene in Enter the Dragon.” For ours is not to plot spoil why, ours is but to review and let the viewer cry . . . in laughter at discovering the absurdities abound in a Trenchard-Smith flick: such as Frog Dreaming (1986, aka The Quest) with Henry “Elliot” Thomas. Pencil that in our “reviews to-do list,” Sam.
See? All movies and off-the-beaten path directors have fans. Some more than others. Others less than the rest. And BTS is the best.
You can free-stream Day of the Panther on Daily Motion and sample the trailer on You Tube. There’s no free-streams of Strike of the Panther, but we found the trailer on You Tube.
Get your copy as part of Mill Creek’s Drive-In Classics set.
* Since Day of the Panther was a big hit Down Under, Stazark also starred in the Trenchard-Smith helmed sequel, Strike of the Panther (1988). Well, it’s said both were filmed back-to-back, not that that fact matters much. Anyway, Stazark also penned his starring role in Black Neon, a tale of a club bouncer out for bloody revenge (see G.B.H), before fading away into the analog snows.
Co-star Linda Megier did one more: she starred alongside Nicole Kidman in the Australian TV movie, Nightmaster (1988).
Our chief villain is played by prolific Australian TV actor John Stanton, who U.S. audiences my recall starring in the James Clavell-adaptation of his best-selling novel, Tai-Pai (1986).
** Do you need more? Do yah? Well, Tubi hooks you up with thirteen Brian Trenchard-Smith films — including Megiddo: The Omega Code 2 and Dead End Drive-In. There’s a few I haven’t seen or was aware of . . . so guess what I’ll be doing this weekend? Brian Trenchard-Smith MOVIE SIGN!!!!
About the Author: You can learn more about the writings of R.D Francis on Facebook.He also writes for B&S About Movies.
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