Obviously by 1973 there had been so many Italian westerns that the genre needed fresh ideas or, more to the point of how the Italian exploitation industry made movies — weirder ones. That’s how we get Bad Kids of the West, a movie in which most of the cast are under the age of ten, foremost amongst them Kid Terror O’Hara (Andrea Balestri), the leader of the group of kids who actually do something constructive with their afternoons and create their own town within the abandoned buildings of Torque.
When Kid hears that criminals are about to rob the bank of River City, they get their first — I mean, their plan has a child smuggling into a suitcase, so it can’t help but succeed — but they probably didn’t figure on the gang hunting them down for the cash.
Seeing as how this is an Italian comedy, you know that at one point that one of the kids will urinate in a mug and it will be served as beer to the outlaws. You may not figure that one of the boys is called Lollipop and plays with gender all the way back in 1973. That said, the chubby kid is nicknamed Butterball because he eats butter sandwiches covered in butter and farts constantly (I see so much of myself in him; a hero) so it’s not all — actually not at all — politically correct.
There’s also a young kickboxer, because by this point, martial arts films were getting big worldwide. So yes, an entire Children of the Corn— but positive and nice — in the Italian west with the son of a sheriff and the son of a gunfighter as the heroes.
On September 13, Visual Vengeance is unleashing the 1991 shot on video action horror spectacle Slaughter Day!
A rarely seen super obscurity of the shot on video era, and arguably the most insane and ambitious micro budget horror action movie ever made! In the rural recesses of Hawaii, a pair of friends must fight an ancient evil force brought to life by an occult book that possesses a group of construction workers, turning them into murderous maniacs. Shot and edited on consumer grade equipment by twin brothers Brent and Blake Cousins, Slaughter Day is packed from start to finish with kinetic lo-fi action scenes, gonzo camerawork and a truckload of homemade gore.
The blu ray is the first time this movie has ever been released on any disc format! Made from an archival 1991 SD master from original tapes, it also has:
New audio commentary with Brent and Blake Cousins
Interview: The Cousins Brothers Today
Limited Edition Slipcase by The Dude Designs — FIRST PRESSING ONLY
Early short films
Liner notes
Collectible Mini-poster
Stick your own VHS sticker set
For more details on the label and updates on new releases – as well as news on upcoming releases – follow Visual Vengeance on social media:
B&S About Movies: Is there any truth to the story that Menahem Golan thought Spider-Man should have eight arms?
Austin Trunick: Yeah, when Menahem originally bought Spider-Man, he supposedly thought that it was like a Teen Wolf-style movie and a story about a teenager who transforms into a horrifying spider monster. Which is very funny. But that story may not even be true. Nothing exists beyond people saying that. But I don’t think that it was ever part of a synopsis or in any sort of script.
I think they convinced him really quick like, “Hey, if you’re going to meet with these Marvel executives don’t, you gotta know that this guy’s not a big giant hairy, terrifying spider.”
B&S: But when it comes to stories about the Go-Go Boys, I believe every one. I can be skeptical and still believe every single one.
Austin: Menahem Golan — especially later in his life — he was very big on his own mythmaking.
He would embellish stories and it’s funny because for every story there is, you wonder if the story is being embellished a little bit. And then sometimes you hear the actual story and it’s so much crazier! What I’m trying to do with these books is get to the realest version of the story, the closest version to the truth.
The biggest stories are the ones Menahem told! He repeated the story over and over and over again, through interviews and different profiles, about how he discovered Jean Claude Van Damme. And it’s always the story that he went out to a French restaurant and Van Damme was a waiter and brought out a bowl of soup for him and kicked the high kick over Menahem’s head without spilling the soup. He repeated that story so many times and I wanted to get the real Menahem meeting story from Van Damme himself.
B&S: I’ve even heard the detail that it was turtle soup.
Austin: Never mind that Van Damme had already been like an extra in Breakin’ and he went into the Cannon offices every day for like several years. When Bloodsport came out, everybody wants to know where this new young action star came from and Menahem cooks up the soup story.
B&S: That’s why I love Cannon. It’s ballyhoo. It’s Chuck Norris reading Reader’s Digest and coming up with Invasion U.S.A.
Austin: Like the Barfly story that Menahem kept telling. Barbet Schroeder came into the office with a saw and was going to cut his fingers off if he didn’t get to make it. Menahem wasn’t even there at the time! He was off making Over the Top.
B&S: I think there’s a tie between Cannon and pro wrestling. Most wrestlers end up believing their character so much they become that character and can’t stop embellishing stories.
Austin: That’s a great way to describe them. It totally fits.
B&S: Menahem is very much like Stan Lee, too.
Austin: But there’s something to these B movie guys, they really have to grow larger. And then their legend grows larger and larger as time moves on. And part of that’s their own like sort of self-mythologizing, but I think people just continue telling these stories. I love to believe all of these stories.
Austin: When I started the first book, that’s one of the ones that I wasn’t as familiar with. I was probably not familiar with other than the title. And it’s one that I just sort of discovered during my time researching Cannon that I grew to love it more and more. It’s the one I’ve probably watched the most in the last three years.
I talked about it on The Cannon Canon, but I also took a few trips left to Provincetown to search out the shooting locations. I got to interview Wings Hauser and John Bedford Lloyd for it. This is funny, but my wife also enjoys this movie, and she loves the Michael Dudikoff movies. She’ll watch some other ones with me now and then but for the most part, a lot of Cannon viewings for the books are just me on my own.
Austin: She’s watched Tough Guys Don’t Dance multiple times now and has gone to the location so that’s fun.
B&S: I think the only Cannon movie my wife likes is The Apple.
Austin: It gets better every time you watch it. Not too long ago, I got the 12-inch extended disco mix of “Coming.” So if you want to have more disco drum beats and have it be like several minutes longer, that’s something that you can bring into your life.
B&S: Why do you think — outside of a few exceptions — Cannon avoided the slasher craze?
Austin: There was a lot of competition there. And they tended to make action movies where they didn’t have as much competition. There was no shortage of low budget horror and I think it was harder for them to resell a horror movie and compete for that shelf space.
B&S: So they could put out weirder stuff instead, like Body and Soul.
Austin: Leon Isaac Kennedy! He had a lot of appreciation for Cannon. That movie has Muhammad Ali, who is probably one of the most famous people at the time on the entire planet. He’s in this small low budget boxing drama for Cannon, which was incredible. I mean, Leon Kennedy was able to just basically to call in a favor. He was just friends with Muhammad Ali, which is awesome.
B&S: I want more Cannon stuff to come out on blu ray and be reconsidered.
Austin: I want Vinegar Syndrome to release Camorra (A Story of Streets, Women and Crime). It hasn’t gotten any sort of official US release. It’s available in Europe, but here it’s near impossible to see. When I watched that, the copy I was working from for the book was a VHS rip onto a DVD with Greek subtitles that I ordered from like an English bootleg site. You couldn’t find it, right?
B&S: I watched it on a Russian bootleg site with someone screaming Russian dialogue over the actual movie. (laughs) That’s the only way to watch a movie.
Austin: It’s by Lina Wertmüller, a critically acclaimed director but also she wrote some great Italian movies, genre movies. It has Harvey Keitel playing a drug smuggler. Angela Molina is in it and there’s a mysterious killer. It’s very giallo, but someone is stalking and murdering drug dealers and leaving as their calling card — a heroin syringe jammed in the crotch. And it’s a wild movie and it’s a Golan Globus production and has never been released in the U.S.
Vinegar Syndrome or even Fun City should be all over that movie.
There are so many that are kind of languishing right now and haven’t had any sort of release. I don’t know the rights situation for Godard’s King Learwhich is a movie that I like talking about it more than watching it. And you would think that somebody, if not Criterion, would have at least put out something. Maybe it had an MGM release in the U.S. on DVD but I even feel like that was like a region one bootleg or something in all regions from somewhere else.
Scorpion/Code Red has put out some stuff, though.
Can I pitch you on one of my ultimate releases?
If they’re not already working on it, one of these labels should be working on it. America 3000is a weird, weird movie but it hasn’t had a release with its original soundtrack. Not even on VHS. Shout! Factory released it on a four-pack but it’s the wrong soundtrack. David Engelbach had actually gone and did an entirely different soundtrack, the voiceover was different, much less pronounced and the music cues were all different.
That’s what was in theaters, so there are theoretically film prints with the correct audio. But every version that’s been on streaming or DVD has the wrong music and dialogue on it.
B&S: Kino Lorber has been releasing lots of Bronson stuff like Murphy’s Law, a hangout movie of two people who should never hang out.
Austin: I’ve seen the script and like at the last minute, they changed the dialogue from just basic profanity to whatever language is in that film. I mean, Kathleen Wilhoite says language that is just as vulgar, but much more surreal and goofy and nonsensical.
In the final part of this interview, Austin talks about his least favorite Cannon film and we wrap things up.
A Spanish, French and Italian co-production, It Can Be Done Amigo was also called Saddle Tramps, which is a wonderful nom de plume for a movie. It also was called Bulldozer is Back Amigo, Hallelujah Amigo and The Big and the Bad.
Bud Spencer is Hiram Coburn and he’s very similar to the Bambino character that he became known for in the Trinity series. He’s being pursued by Sonny (Jack Palance), a gunfighter and procurer of women of ill repute who is upset that Coburn took his sister Mary’s (Davy Saval, Moon Pilot) virginity without marrying her. As part of their constant battles, the two meet an orphan named Chip who is soon fighting off the offers to buy the house he inherited from his uncle by a priest called Franciscus (Francisco Rabal), who soon brings in Sonny and Mary, then marries off Coburn to the pregnant young girl. Sonny tells Coburn that when his son becomes 21, he will finally shoot him. Hijinks, as they say, ensue.
How self-referential had Italian westerns become by 1972? This movie was shot on McBain ranch set from Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In The West. Bud Spencer’s character says, “So this is the famous well” in reference to the well that caused the railroad to be built so close to that farm.
This is a movie that has a farm with mud people like to eat and where Bud Spencer puts on glasses every time he has to fight someone. If you haven’t gotten into the silly side of Italian westerns, your enjoyment of this may or may not occur.
It Can Be Done, Amigo was directed by Maurizio Lucidi (The Designated Victim) and written by Rafael Azcona from a story by Ernesto Gastaldi.
Known in Italy as Il pistolero di Arizona (The Arizona Gunslinger) and L’uomo venuto dal nulla (The Man from Nowhere), this film has quite a setup in the soundtrack: “He came out of nowhere, with no one beside him. He rode out of the sunrise all alone. A man out of nowhere, with no one to love him. His one faithful companion was his gun. No one could say, just where he came from. No one could say, where he was going. Was he a man without a heart, a man with a heart made of stone…”
Torrez Gordon Watch (Fernando Sancho) is breaking prisoners out of jail and telling them to join his Sidewinder Gang or die. Somehow, Arizona Colt (Giuliano Gemma) gets out alive. He gets involved with the gang again when a member named Clay Clay (Giovanni Pazzafini) murders a girl named Dolores (Rosalba Neri) who recognizes him. After the gang robs another bank, her father — the banker — realizes that the criminal that stole all the money in town is also the man who killed his daughter. He hires Arizona to stop the gang and get revenge for the low price of $500 and his other daughter’s vow of marriage.
If you enjoyed Giuliano Gemma as Ringo, you’ll really like this. He’s totally sarcastic, plays jokes on the gang and then gets deadly serious when it’s time to kill them off. He even orders a glass of milk at the bar, just like Ringo! Of course, he’s told they only have beer, so he grabs a mug. There’s also a lot of similarity to Django, as Colt’s hands and leg are injured and he must relearn how to be a gunfighter.
Director Michele Lupo also made The Weekend Murders. This was written by the master of all Italian film writers, Ernesto Gastaldi, along with Luciano Martino, who produced so many films with his brother Sergio, helped write Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Keyamongst many other films and romanced Wandisa Guida, Edwige Fenech and Olga Bisera.
June 16: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 80s action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
I have no idea what genre this movie is and I’ll bet it has no idea either. It is an example of one of my favorite microgenre: Italian filmmakers in America, further subset Italian filmmakers in Florida*.
Alberto De Martino doesn’t get mentioned in the same conversation as Argento or Fulci. He’s not even in the Lenzi, Martino or Deodato world either. But he did direct The Antichristand Holocaust 2000, two examples of the Xerox 70s occult boom that I have a particular fondness for. And he also made the shot in Canada poliziotteschi/giallo hybrid Strange Shadows In an Empty Room, which is a movie more people should watch and the downright weird superhero film The Pumaman. Also — and how can I forget this — he made the wildest Eurospy movie, Operation Kid Brother, which uses Sean Connery’s kid brother and everyone else that has ever been in a Bond film, daring Cubby Brocoli to repeat the violence — and yes, murder allegedly — that he unleashed on Ted Healy.
De Martino was also smart to cast David Warbeck and Laura Trotter as the leads. If I had my way, this would say “The stars of The Beyond and Nightmare City are back together for the first time!”
Warbeck is Craig Milford, a local reporter sent to a college — let’s assume it’s the University of Miami — to interview a professor cloning a cell from DNA that was found inside a meteorite. This seems like the worst of ideas, but you know how movie science works. As Milford leaves, gunmen break in, kill everyone and take the alien cells. They start erasing anyone who knows anything about the experiment and as that includes Milford, he goes on the run.
Somehow, Milford becomes our backwoods planet’s only savior as telekinetic businessman Anderson (John Ireland, who was in great stuff like Spartacus and Red River but I know him as King Arthur from Waxwork II: Lost in Time) wants to use that alien DNA, which is already growing into a quite honestly freaking me out looking alien fetus. He has help from another psychic extraterrestrial, Joanna Fitzgerald (Trotter), who he of course is going to do some reading under the covers with just as my wife walks in, angrily looks at the TV and says, “Why does this happen all the time in Italian movies?” and “That woman’s body hair is upsetting.”
The aliens left a message on the videotape for Milford that the alien baby is bad, baby, and we’re going to have to do something about it. That means that we’re going to watch Milford get launched around a room by a tentacled fetus, which I had no idea just how much I’d love. Also, by aliens, I mean that they are ghosts and one of them is just a big giant hand.
Between the score by Detto Mariano that approximates Harold Faltermeyer’s “Axel F” and Jan Hammer’s synth beats**, this movie’s title — and alternative version Miami Horror — are supposed to make us think Crockett and Tubbs. De Martino going by the name Martin Herbert is also supposed to fool us into thinking this is an American movie. Thankfully, it is deliriously Italian, filled with swamp boats, assassins and conspiracy. It makes a great double feature for the similarly goofball UFO quasi-gialo Eyes Behind the Stars.
Compounding the fact that this is an action movie is that the poster has three helicopters and an airboat all racing away from a gigantic explosion while Werbeck holds a revolver and a woman who is not in this movie in any way wears an outfit that Vampirella would think is kind of uncomfortable.
Also: Werbeck shoots a helicopter out of the air with a handgun, the kind of lunacy that only Jack Nicholson in whiteface gets away with.
I had no idea that Toronto had a major Caribana Festival and that Joella Crichton had won it seven times in a row. This particular Caribbean carnival started in 1967 and takes place on the nearest weekend to Emancipation Day which celebrates the day that the British Empire passed the Slavery Abolition Act. See, you can learn something new every day.
Director Chris Strikes, who put the film together with co-writer Sonia Godding, got incredible access to not just Crichton’s life, but her entire family. The film also explores the hard work and planning that goes into preparing for the competition and building the elaborate costumes. Plus, there’s plenty of information on the history of the competition and Carnival itself in Toronto, as well as how it presents a unique window into black and Caribbean-Canadian identity.
Most importantly, the film shows that Caribbean communities don’t have rigid standards of beauty, as most of North America does. It’s also a chance to see Crichton as she attempts to win a historic tenth title in her last ever competition.
Becoming a Queen is now available on demand. You can learn more at the official site.
A former Marine with PTSD is on vacation in the Philippines, a place of sun, romance and murder, as someone is stalking and killing each woman that he get close to, making him the lead suspect in the series of serial murders.
The first film by director Gregory Segal, the murders don’t take the main focus of the movie, as part of it is a detective named Cruz (Mon Confiado) looking for the killer while the marine (Lev Gorn) moves to a smaller island and falls for Delilah (Lovely Abella), a girl who doesn’t fall into his bed as easily as all the others. Cruz soon follows and together, they come up with a plan to capture the real killer.
This isn’t a by the numbers murder mystery and takes great advantage of its location. It’s definitely worth a watch and Segal shows great promise for just his first film.
When asked about the movie, Segal said, “Though I am quite familiar with life in the country, making a film in the Philippines as a first-time feature writer/director was my privilege. I had the opportunity to work with some of the best actors a first-time director could hope for, from both the United States and the Philippines. We tried to tell an even-handed story, seeing the world and its problems not just through an American lens, but acknowledging that viewpoint is just one way to experience the mysteries that people encounter in life. Having been able to wrap up this philosophy in a storyline that is hopefully engaging and suspenseful to people everywhere, I can only feel fortunate for having such a great international team, from my cinematographer all the way down.”
The Expat is available to rent and own on global digital HD internet and satellite platforms through Freestyle Digital Media.
Not an Italian western — no matter how many YouTube channels tell you so — this movie was also released as Pursuit and A Man Called She. It stars Ray Danton, once the husband of Julie Adams and the narrator of Psychic Killer, as Yellow Shirt.
Shot under the title Sh’e ee Clit Soak (The Man Who Wore the Yellow Shirt in Apache), Yellow Shirt seeks revenge against the U.S. Calvary who killed most of his people.
Some sites report this as being directed by Tom Quillen, who could also be Vern Piehl or Vincent Powers. Vern Piehl was also the producer of this movie. They could be the same person. Or Quillen could be a stage director associated with the Arizona Repertory Theater and the Phoenix Musical Theater Guild. It was written by Dewitt and Jack Lee, who also wrote The Legend of Jedediah Carver.
Honestly, the question of who directed this is way more interesting than what they directed.
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