In a world where their femininity is bought and sold, two sex workers find themselves in love with one another and can see a world of happiness, if only they can get through the darkness that exists in the heart of their lives.

Sascha (Katharina Behrens) and Maria (Adam Hoya, a performance artist and former escort herself who was the subject of the documentary Searching Eva) work in a Berlin brothel. Sascha sees her son every few days but otherwise is fine with her life; she has regular clients and gets along with her fellow sex workers. Maria is a younger woman that immediately bonds with her, but can the two of them navigate the barrier between sex and love when they sell intimacy to survive?

Director and writer Henrika Kull has made this her debut film and it’s an assured movie that seems like it came from a veteran. There’s a moment of true sadness in this as Maria keeps making phone calls to her dead father in Italy, leaving him rambling voice mails that no one will ever hear. The conflict between the lovers comes as Sascha has accepted her career as someone who has sex with others for money; Maria sees herself as perhaps something more.

This movie feels as if we are hidden in the rooms where the women work, privy to their lives and the secrets of what it’s like to give of yourself for money yet try to hold something for the person you give your heart to, which may be the most difficult transaction.

I was sent a short called Leathanach Deiridh this week that’s really interesting. Based on true events, as a young woman tells her life story, starting with her birth at a mother and baby home to spending the rest of her existence wondering about her lost family.

Directed by Michael Antonio Keane, who has mainly worked in short films, and co-written by Keane and Saorlaith Ní Shuibhne, this film is in Irish Gaelic, a language that I haven’t watched many movies within. It’s just ten minutes long, but there’s such drama between its leads, with Veronica Henley as Dr. Aine, who listens to the tale of the film and Deirbhile Lee as Dearbhla, the young woman whose life must seem so much longer — and painful — than it should be.

Keane has taken a confined location, two characters and ten minutes and emerges with something worth watching several times.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey, Currently, in addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, and voice-over artist, he contributes to Drive-In Asylum. His first article, “Grindhouse Memories Across the U.S.A.,” was published in issue #23. He’s also written “I Was a Teenage Drive-in Projectionist” and “Emanuelle in Disney World and Other Weird Tales of a Trash Film Lover” for upcoming issues.A different version of this review originally appeared on the now-defunct website Tapehead in 1997.

Monte Hellman is deserving of a larger cult following. I will now get on my soapbox and trumpet his name into cyberspace in the hopes of winning a few converts to my religion. A former Roger Corman protege, Hellman, who passed away last year, kicked around for over five decades directing, ghost directing when other directors croaked mid-way through shooting (The Greatest and Avalanche Express), and producing low-budget fare. Sure, some of his stuff is purely of the “I have to pay the rent” variety. No one ever saw The Iguana when it was originally released, and he did a Silent Night, Deadly Night sequel. He’s best known for the cult favorite Two-Lane Blacktop (1971), but he was a gifted director who never managed to cross over to full mainstream filmmaking despite his obvious abilities. Between 1965 and 1978, he made four extraordinary westerns: Ride in the Whirlwind (1965), The Shooting (1967), The Cockfighter, a/k/a Born to Kill (1974), and China 9, Liberty 37 (1978). (OK, I bend the genre a little to call a film about cockfighting a western, but it did star Warren Oates, and thematically it fits in with the other films.) Whether you fall into the camp that believes his westerns are slow and pretentious, or like me, you think he’s a lost talent who made one western masterpiece, The Shooting, and three near-masterpieces, there’s no getting over that Monte Hellman’s films should be seen. You won’t forget them, and you can later argue about them for months, if not a lifetime, afterward. How many current directors fit that bill?

The last of the Hellman westerns is a true spaghetti western: China 9, Liberty 37—the title is a reference to a milepost sign—a film widely hated by critics and audiences alike. Fabio Testi (What Have You Done to Solange? and Stateline Motel), a legendary gunslinger, is saved from the noose by agreeing to assassinate Warren Oates, another gunslinger, so that the railroad robber barons can steal Oates’s land. Complicating matters is Jenny Agutter as Oates’s wife who falls for Testi. Agutter stabs Oates after he gives her a brutal beating, and then she and Testi ride off with a recovered Oates and his band in hot pursuit.

Let’s get this straight up front: Testi is awful in the lead. His thick Italian accent and mumbled phonetic English had me wishing that he had been dubbed by someone else, anyone else, including Nathan Lane. Despite this disastrous casting, however, just about everything else about the film is excellent, especially Guiseppe Rotunno’s stunning cinematography. (He also shot The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Wolf, and The Stendhal Syndrome.) And savvy film fans will instantly recognize composer Pino Donaggio’s signature lush strings on the soundtrack, parts of which would not sound out of place in his scores for Brian DePalma films of that era. Oates is perfect as always—this guy never gave a bad performance—as an introspective man tortured by his wife’s unfaithfulness. He has a remarkably good reaction shot when, after recaptioning Agutter, he stumbles upon his brother about to ravish her. That was the hallmark of a Warren Oates performance—a tough, laconic man beset by circumstances outside his control. Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention that director Sam Peckinpah makes his acting debut in a colorful cameo.

But above all, despite a wavering accent—sounding variously like Patsy Kensit, Peta Wilson from the old USA Network series La Femme Nikita, or an Irish charwoman—Jenny Agutter nearly steals the show. Agutter, so memorable as the young girl in Nic Roeg’s classic Walkabout and An American Werewolf in London, but underutilized in films such as Logan’s Run and The Riddle of the Sands, is positively radiant here. With her lightened hair, beautiful face, and numerous nude scenes (even with some full-frontal nudity, but you’ll need a telescope to check it out), Agutter plays out her part with no inhibitions. Younger cineastes, so used to cosmetically enhanced starlets of today will be startled by the exposure of Agutter’s real-woman, natural body. Nonetheless, she is extremely alluring and endearing, and you will never see a more ethereal expression than the one she has when she’s making love to Testi in a river. And with mumbling rod-puppet Testi fondling her, that takes some excellent acting!

China 9, Liberty 37 is an unusual western because one might persuasively argue that it’s really a retro chick flick disguised as a spaghetti western. Jenny Agutter is such a strong, well-realized character with testosterone boy Testi that many female viewers will undoubtedly compare this to a Harlequin-romance. Meanwhile, male viewers will simply fantasize about Jenny—Jenny bathing, Jenny in a transparent nightgown silhouetted in the moonlight, Jenny in the river… But I digress. This is a super-offbeat film that true B & S About Movies fans will recognize as something more than a typical spaghetti western shoot ’em up. Try it, you might like it.

A violent gang of crooks gets the word that after a botched heist that they must find and eliminate the man who betrayed them and stole the money.

Louis Mandylor plays Trent, the leader of the gang, Daniel Baldwin is the shady man known as Boothe and Gary Daniels — yes, the direct to video action star! — is as close to a hero — well, maybe not — as this movie gets as Alex, the wheel man upset that a diamond heist has ended up with dead innocent people.

Now the hot-headed Killian (Ryan M. Shaw), the injured Geoff (LeJon Woods), Alex, Zarina (Zhuzha Akova) and Hayden (Chris Torem) head to get their money, but things go even worse from there.

Directed by Mark Savage — who made Painkiller last year — from a script by Ben Demaree and a story by Jeff Miller, this movie takes its low budget and reminds you of the crime and martial arts movies we rented when we could still go to a physical store and get five movies for five dollars.

I’m all for more Gary Daniels. I’ve been a fan since Fist of the North Star.

Bring Him Back Dead is now available on DVD and digital from Uncork’d Entertainment.

Autopsy (1975): Armando Crispino really only did two horror films, 1972’s The Dead Are Alive and this 1975 giallo, which is a shame, as this is a pretty decent entry in the genre. Known in Italy as Macchie Solari (Sunspots), it does indeed feature sunspot footage from space before we see any major murders. And if you’re looking for a movie packed with autopsy footage, good news. It totally lives up to its title.

Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer, who is also in Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Perfume of the Lady in Black) is a pathology student who is trying to work on a theory about suicides, one that’s disputed by a young priest, Father Paul, whose sister — Simona’s dad’s latest fling — has recently killed herself. It turns out there’s been a whole series of self-killings which are being blamed on, you guessed it, sunspots.

I mean, what can you say about a movie that starts with several of said suicides, like sliced wrists, a self-induced car explosion and a man machine gunning his kids before turning the gun on himself? Obviously, this is a rather grisly affair, with real corpse photos spread — quite literally — throughout the film.

In between all of the gore, corpse penises, two bodies falling to their deaths and crime museums, there’s also Ray Lovelock (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) as Simona’s boyfriend, an out there Morricone score and a heroine who hallucinates that the dead are coming back to life.

The plot gets pretty convoluted, but if you’re on this site, you obviously appreciate films like this and will get past it. This is an Italian 70’s murder movie, though, so if you get easily upset about the way men behave, well, be forewarned.

Murder Mansion (1972): Originally released as La Mansion de la Niebla (The Mansion in the Fog) and also known as Murder Mansion, this Spanish/Italian film fuses old school haunted house horror with the then new school form of the giallo.

The plot concerns a variety of people drawn to a house in the fog, so the original title was pretty much correct. There are plenty of European stars to enjoy, like Ida Galli, who also uses the name Evelyn Stewart and appeared in Fulci’s The Psychic as well as The Sweet Body of Deborah. And hey, there’s Analía Gadé from The Fox with the Velvet Tail. Hello, George Rigaud, from All the Colors of the Dark and The Case of the Bloody Iris! They’re all here in a movie that seems to make little or no sense and then gets even more bonkers as time goes on.

This was one of the 13 titles included in Avco Embassy’s Nightmare Theater package syndicated in 1975 (the others were Marta, Death Smiles on a Murderer, Night of the Sorcerers, Fury of the Wolfman, Hatchet for the Honeymoon, Horror Rises from the Tomb, Dear Dead Delilah, Doomwatch, Bell from Hell, Witches Mountain, Mummy’s Revenge and The Witch). How did these movies play on regular TV?

There’s a history of vampires in the house, the previous owner was a witch and hey — this is starting to feel like an adult version of Scooby Doo with better-looking ladies. That’s not a bad thing. But if you’ve never watched a badly dubbed giallo-esque film before, don’t expect any of this to make a lick of sense.

Crazy Desires of a Murderer (1977): Sure, that’s a pretty lurid title — the Italian title I vizi morbosi di una governante translates as Morbid Vices of a Housekeeper — and trust me, this lives up to it, what with an older woman using a mentally challenged man and a teenager sexually — not at the same time! — and then a game of charades which is mostly people yelling out the names of films while everyone else gropes one another.

There are more than a lot of camera zooms in here, as well as bad sartorial choices and even worse life ones. When Ileana and her bunch of hip friends — their words not mine — gather at a gothic castle owned by a wheelchair-bound older relative of one of the girls, things get pervy, weird and murder, just as you’d expect.

If you are a hip friend or have hip friends (at which point that makes you a hip friend), then you should take this warning: do not go to hang out in gothic castles. Nothing, in my movie — not life — experience says that things will go well.

Meanwhile, two of these with it pals are using Chinese treasures to smuggle heroin — as you do — while Elsa the party girl ends up with both of her eyes torn out, just like Ileana’s mother had done to her by a relative who has lost his mind and is possibly prowling the catacombs of the castle.

This would be the last film that Filippo Walter Ratti would direct. You may have seen his other movies, including Mondo Erotico, Operation White Shark and Night of the Damned. Screenwriter Ambrogio Molteni also wrote the two Black Emanuelle movies, as well as Yellow Emanuelle, Sister Emanuelle and Violence in a Women’s Prison.

Speaking of Emanuelle, you may recognize Annie Carol Edel from Emanuelle and Francoise or perhaps from Almost Human or even The True Story of the Nun of Monza. No? How about Isabelle Marchall from Black Emanuelle? Or Patrizia Gori from Cry of a Prostitute, The Return of the Exorcist or as Francoise in Emanuelle and Francoise?

All of the movies in this set have been newly scanned and restored in 2k from their 35mm original camera negative. Plus, you get extras like a theatrical introduction with director Armando Crispino and a feature on his career, as well as interviews with actresses Ida Galli and actor Giuseppe Colombo. As always, there are also trailers and image galleries. Get it from Vinegar Syndrome.