Maurizio Merli is, for me, the face of poliziotteschi, taking on a similar role as Clint Eastwood as a judge, jury and executioner of criminals that lives by his own strict code and must follow it, no matter how much it destroys his life. Whether he’s Commissario Betti in Violent Rome, Violent Naples and Special Cop in Action or Inspector Leonardo Tanzi in The Tough Ones and The Cynic, The Rat and The Fist or out of the badge roles in Mannaja and Highway Racer, Merli comes across as a man of action and principle.

In Convoy Busters, he plays Inspector Olmi, a rough cop who uses brutish methods to discover who killed a young girl with a professional-looking slash to the throat and dumped her in the river. His case leads him to the highest chambers of the corrupt Rome government, which outs him in the crosshairs of those officials, organized crime and the media. An attempt to take him out leads to the death of an innocent bystander, which is enough for the powers that be to send him away to a small fishing town and out of their lives.

Olmi, of course, can’t shut off his need to be a cop and soon discovers that there’s a smuggling operation going down right in his new home. That’s when the real title of this movie — Un Poliziotto Scomodo (An Uncontrolled Cop) — makes more sense, but one assumes that Convoy was a big deal in  1978 and if it got more people to see this movie, then that’s the name in foreign markets.

There’s a great brawl in a bar, a helicopter chase and plenty of great scenery between the two halves of this story, which nearly feel like they give you two films. The beginning, as the girl is taken from the water, feels almost giallo.

Director Stelvio Massi was the cameraman on A Fistful of Dollars and director of photography for The Case of the Bloody Iris, as well as the director of Emergency Squad and Magnum Cop as well as two giallo, Five Women for the Killer and the berserk Arabella the Black Angel. The script was written by Stilvio’s son Danilo (who was also the assistant director), Gino Carpone (Conquest) and Teodoro Corrà (Body Puzzle).

The Cauldron Films blu ray of  Convoy Busters features a 2K restoration from the original camera negative with both English and Italian audio options as well as new featurettes like Maurizio Merli: A Lethal Hunter of Subtle Variation with tough-guy film expert Mike Malloy and interviews with Maurizio Matteo Merli and Danilo Massi, who also has a Stelvio Massi video tribute. Archival extras include the alternate Convoy Busters, interviews with journalist Eolo Capacci, Ruggero Deodato, Enzo G Castellari , Maurizio Matteo and Enio Girolami, plus an image gallery, trailer and a poster, all inside a gorgeous slipcase with artwork by Haunt Love. Get it from Cauldron Films.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I’m so excited that more Cannon movies are coming out on blu ray, like this new release. It has a high definition (1080p) presentation of this great 80s movie, as well as interviews with Boaz Davidson, Lawrence Monoson, Diane Franklin and Adam Greenberg as well as a photo gallery, the trailer, a TV spot, a mini-poster and a limited edition slipcover. You can get it from MVD.

This movie is a destructive force that still leaves hurt feelings decades after it’s been viewed. Sure, it’s a remake of director Boaz Davidson’s Lemon Popsicle and that movie ends the same way, but that movie came back with plenty of sequels. Once The Last American Virgin drops its bomb on you, it lets you watch everything burn and then that’s it. There’s no happiness, no hope, just the song “Just Once” and the destruction of the film’s hero in a way that there’s no coming back from.

When a movie has a title like Lemon Popsicle, you don’t know what to expect. It’s a foreign movie released in 1978 that could be about anything. But when the title is The Last American Virgin and the movie comes out in the middle of the teen sex comedy craze, you don’t expect things to go this way.

Gary (Lawrence Monsoon, Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter) is a pizza delivery boy with two friends, the cool ladies man Rick (Steve Antin, Jessie in the “Jessie’s Girl” video) and David (Joe Rubbo). Most of their hijinks revolve around trying to have sex, like telling girls they have cocaine — it’s really Sweet’n Low — or sleeping with a prostitute or Carmello, a Spanish woman who Gary meets while delivering pizza. Everyone gets their turn except for Gary, who is the titular character.

Yet he has better plans for his first time. He’s in love with Karen (Diane Franklin!), but she’s in love with Rick, who plans on sleeping with her once and dumping her. He does exactly that, getting her pregnant. She turns to Gary, who sells almost everything he owns and borrows money to pay for her abortion, then nurses her during the lowest moment in her life. They share a kiss and she invites him to her 18th birthday party.

That’s when the pain hits hard.

This film takes what Lemon Popsicle did on its soundtrack and transports it to the 80s, which is an incredibly smart move. The music is vital to this film’s success, featuring heavy hitters like The Cars, Devo, The Police, Journey, REO Speedwagon, U2, Blondie and the Human League. I mean, how do you think Bono felt when he saw this and his song “I Will Follow,” which is about his mom who died when he was only 14, is used over an abortion montage?

So much of this movie is very Cannon Films and that’s also the joy of it. It also leaves me with so many questions. Why does Gary bring Karen a bag of oranges when she’s lying in the hospital? Why would they make this seem like a teen movie and give it that ending, when if it was a date movie it’s filled with way too much raunchy sex? And how about the fact that the actors who played Gary and Rick, who come to blows in the movie over the girl who got between their friendship, have come out? How does Gary not realize that Karen’s friend Rose, who he gets set up with, is geeky hot (maybe this makes more sense in 2021 than 1982)? And how did cinematographer Adam Greenberg (who also filmed Terminator 2, 10 to Midnight, Near Dark and many more) feel about recreating so many of the same shots that he’d made in Lemon Popsicle?

Director Davidson also made Hospital Massacre, Salsa and American Cyborg: Steel Warrior, movies that would not even hint at the art that he would make with this movie. If you’ve ever seen the poster for this and laughed it off as a simple teen comedy, I want you to take a chance on this movie. But be prepared for the final moments.

Scare Package was a fun reminder of the days of renting stacks of horror videos and seeing how many you can watch in one weekend. The sequel begins with the funeral of Rad Chad Buckley (Jeremy King), killed by a demon in the first film, but his videotaped last will and testament ends up bringing all of the funeral guests into a series of games and traps to remind them of the power of video horror.

Except for creator and main director Aaron B. Koontz, Anthony Cousins was the only segment director to return from the original. That said, there’s some fun stuff here:

Alexandra Barreto directed and wrote “Welcome to the 90s,” which takes place on New Year’s Eve 1989, as a masked killer named Tony (Joshua Miller, who also did special effects for this) keeps trying to kill a sorority filled with thingly disguised versions of final girls who keep being saved by Buffy (Steph Barkley) just as the fun girls would soon take over as horror stars.

“The Night He Came Back Again! Part VI: The Night She Came Back” continues the slasher remix from the first film but adds a very Strode twist to the entire affair. I dug this, even if it’s much of the same humor from the first installment. This was directed by Anthony Cousins and written by Cousins, Ryan Schaddelee and Anthony Karsko.

Jed Shepherd’s “Special Edition” stars all of the women from the movie Host and is all about the ability to pause Three Men and a Baby to see the exact cursed moment within that movie.

“We’re So Dead” by Koontz somehow mixes the heart of Stephen King’s teen heroes with the gore of a Stuart Gordon movie.

While this doesn’t work as well for me as the original, there are moments that made me laugh. Any cast that includes Dustin Rhodes, Graham Skipper and Kelli Maroney, as well as a soundtrack that includes Dragon Sound’s “Friends Forever” and Stan Bush’s “Thunder In Your Heart” can’t be all bad, though. It helps get you past the sub-Saw moments and at times forced humor. There are times when horror fans get too overly reverential and referential if you know what I mean.

In director and writer Keith Boynton’s The Scottish Play, Sydney (Tina Benko) decides to escape the big world of Hollywood by heading to New England and acting in a Shakespeare festival. She likes her leading man Hugh (Geraint Wyn Davies) and gets along with the director Adam (Peter Mark Kendall). And then she meets William Shakespeare himself (Will Brill), who reveals to her that the curse of Macbeth is all the fault of his ghost, as he was never happy with what he wrote. He’ll leave her production alone if she’s open to some rewrites, however.

If you told me that this would be a movie that I’d find fun, funny and charming before I saw it, I’d have called you a fool. But after watching it — actually I wouldn’t be that rude, but I wouldn’t expect to like this — I really fell for it. It’s a cute little concept, told well by a good cast and an interesting script.

I like the idea that someone from the outside — not knowing that the bard himself was writing the new version — would be upset that someone was messing with Macbeth. That’s the conflict that drives this film, as well as gives an actress the chance to meet the playwright that inspired so many stories of his own.

Directed and written by Noah Marks, this is the story of Madam Evergreen (Kathy Richter), who after losing the Presidential election gets two agents — Ralph (Charlie Ferrara) and Tucker (Harrison Marx) — to activate a Chinese virus so that the elderly politician Leeroy Bishop (Richard Masley) can win the election and stop the virus. Oh yeah — they’re also immortal and have been kidnapped by Vict President Hoosier (Mark Gross) who wants to win the election himself.

Yeah. I think we’ve all lived through enough badness politically on all sides that I can say that completely apolitically I didn’t enjoy this. It just goes on and on and it’s quite hard to poke fun at either side of the aisle when their daily errors are so laughable that they almost seem like a bad comedy sketch in real life.

I saw a review on IMDB that said, “There’s no way the censorship apparatus will permit this to become popular. Currently above six stars, guarantee it falls precipitously.”

You know, sometimes things can just suck outside of politics. They can just suck on their own.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Yes, Christmas is over, but better late than never.

Bill (Todd Lubitsch), his wife Lisa (Janice Angela Burt) and children Eli (Joshua Rose) and Rachel (Ruby Setnik) are just trying to celebrate Christmas Eve when a man (Greg Sestero) breaks in and takes advantage of Rachel wanting to make movies by showing four of his own VHS films.

“Travel Buggies” is about doomed vloggers going camping and doing a summoning ritual, which as you can imagine, is a very bad idea. “The Christmas Gift” has a father sending himself in a box to his kids so they can do their own unboxing video, but hiring a Santa (Vernon Wells!) who has different ideas of a holiday present. “Untitled” has a man trying to deliver a package before his head explodes. “The Christmas Spirit” is about a couple moving into a new home and learning that it’s haunted. They try and hire someone to come over the holidays to exorcise their home, but only Paranormal Perry (Dave Sheridan) is available.

The quality of these tales varies, but the acting by Wells and Sheridan puts this above and beyond the expectations of a streaming horror anthology, much less a holiday-themed film.

Robert Livings and Randy Nundlall Jr. co-directed and wrote this and there are moments that really work, like the man flying all over the box and the tortures he endures from Santa and Mrs. Claus, as well as the tension and humor working together in the exorcism story.

You can watch this on YouTube from Terror Films.

When Meagan Mullen (Katarina Hughes) moves far away from friends and family into a new house, she does what so many do: She keeps in touch with them via her vlog. And yes, that same video diary allows us to see what happens around her and to her as she begins to experience the supernatural.

This movie was originally shot in 2012, but released this year, which may explain why it’s a found footage film. Actually, found footage has gone nowhere, as so many streaming movies still rely on its shaky camerawork and “did you see that?” scares.

The good news is that The Death of April moves toward more of a true crime mockumentary, interviewing her family and those around her while continuing to explore the slowly growing weirder footage that she shot herself.

As for who April is, well, it takes Megan’s friend Heather (Chelsea Clark) and an Ouija board to learn that she once lived in the same place and was murdered. I kind of wish the film showed more of how Megan’s personality changed, as her videos don’t show that while the interviews with people who knew her sure do. That said, for a found footage film, this finds an interesting way to tell its story and doesn’t get boring, which is so much more than I can say for most movies in this genre.

The Death of April is available on demand and on Tubi from Terror Films.