Wes Craven’s second full-length film — if we don’t include the porn film The Fireworks Woman that he directed as Abe Snake — is a trip through the Nevada desert that he wrote, produced and directed. You can see it as straight-forward narrative or you can choose to see it as a parable on how man will always be inhuman to other men.

The Carter family really gets it in this one. After being targeted by a family of cannibal savages in the Nevada desert, the family’s leader Big Bob is crucified to a tree, the daughter Brenda is raped, numerous members are shot and stabbed and also killed, one of the family dogs is killed and even the baby is threatened with being a meal.

But they retaliate with just as much inhumanity as they battle back against the desert clan of Papa Jupiter, Pluto (Michael Berryman!) and Jupiter. Even the second family dog joins in and takes out his rage on the mutant clan.

The idea of an irradiated gang in the desert is intriguing and was inspired by the Sawney Bean clan in 1600’s Scotland, which claimed the lives of nearly 1,000 people.

Additionally, Craven was inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and ended up making a film that — in my opinion — lives in its shadow. Interestingly enough, the films share product design from Robert Burns, as well as some of the exact same animal parts that decorate the homes of each film’s cannibal lairs.

There’s a sequel, a remake and a sequel to that as well. In the late 1980’s, Craven even debated a third movie that was to be set in space, while his 1995 film produced for HBO, Mind Ripper, was originally intended as the third film in the series.

Cugini Carnali translates as First Cousins, but this movie was also titled The Visitor, Hot and Bothered, La Prima, Loving Cousins, and High School Girl.

This is the story of Nico d’Altamura (Alredo Pea, who was also in two other commedia sexy all’italiana, the Dagmar Lassander-starring Classe Mista and the Edwige Fenech movie The School Teacher), who is a shy sixteen-year-old who falls in love with his city-born cousin Sonia (Susan Player, Invasion of the Bee Girls, Malibu Beach).

This comes from director Sergio Martino, who you may know better from his early 70s master class on making giallo — Your Vice Is a Locked Room, and Only I Have the Key, All the Colors of the Dark, Torso, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail — or his sexy bedroom movies with Edwige Fenech.

Nico comes from a more provincial family than Sonia, and while his parents are strict, they have their secrets. His father is sleeping with the family maid (Rosalba Neri, Lady Frankenstein) and also waiting for their uncle to die, but he keeps alive either out of spite or to keep sleeping with prostitutes. When Sonia comes to town, she causes a scandal by wearing miniskirts to church and sunbathing nude, but let’s face it, Nico has no idea what he’s in for.

Martino was a genre hopper. The year after this movie, he made two poliziotteschi (Gambling City and Silent Action), a giallo (The Suspicious Death of a Minor), and Sex With a Smile, which features Barbara Bouchet, Fenech, and Marty Feldman. This may not be his best movie, but it’s not his worst.

Directed by Igor Auzins and written by Forrest Redlich, who created the Australian soap opera E Street, High Rolling has Tex (Joseph Bottoms) and Alby (Grigor Taylor) leaving behind their carnival jobs to head to the Gold Coast. They soon meet a hitchhiker named  Lynn (Judy Davis) and, along with two dancers, Barbie (Wendy Hughes) and Susie (Sandy McGregor), hijack a bus.

Tex is the impulsive American dreamer, while Alby provides the grounded, albeit reluctant, Australian counterpart. Their chemistry is the engine of the film, fueled by a 1970s obsession with the open road as a symbol of ultimate freedom.

What I didn’t like is that they get the Corvette they drive in by knocking out a gay man, Arnold (John Clayton) and then stealing the sports car. This scene is a jarring reminder of the year this came out. Using a marginalized character, even if they are the drug-dealing bad guy, as a punching bag to facilitate the protagonists’ journey complicates the likable rogue personas the movie tries to build for Tex and Alby.

At least the girls get to do their version of Donna Summer’s “Love to Love You Baby.” And you get to see Chantal Contouri from The Day After Halloween and Thirst on the bus.

Also: Before she became an international multi-award-winning actress, Judy Davis made her film debut in this movie as Lynn.

I have to speak with pride for my Italian filmmaking countrymen: they do not give a fuck.

Any other movie these days that would put a child in danger would not do what director Enzo G. Castellari and writers Tito Carpi, Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino and Leonardo Martín do in this movie.

When the question is asked, “Does this go too far?” I assume Castellari laughed and drank another shot of J&B, delirious in the director’s chair.

Castellari claims he saw Bullitt and wanted to make this, but he probably was thinking of The French Connection. I mean, Fernando Rey is in it, just to assure us that, yes, this Italian movie will be stealing a lot from that movie.

But who cares? This is the story of a tough cop, Vice-Commissioner Belli (Franco Nero), battling perhaps even tougher bad guys, the kinds of drug dealers that’ll blow up their own men just to take out a few lawmen. These new criminals are so disgusting that even the the old-school organized crime bosses like Cafiero (Fernando Rey) try to take them out, only to learn that some of their most loyal men have decided to work for the other side.

Even after all the work it takes to convince Commissioner Aldo Scavino (James Whitmore) that he has a case, Belli must watch as the old man is killed. Soon, the new mob beats his lover Mirella (Delia Boccardo) into submission and then well…runs his daughter over with a car.

Any other movie would hold back from this and do it off-screen.

Welcome to Italy.

In Erica Schultz’s The Sweetest Taboo: An Unapologetic Guide to Child Kills In Film, she refers to this scene as one of the best ever made: “…High Crime’s car death is definitely top tier.” It’s shocking, so wild that I had to rewind it to ensure I had just seen what I thought I had. So when Belli goes wild, killing off everyone in his path — and looking suave doing it, I’m secure enough in my manhood to say Franco Nero is smoldering — we understand. I mean, we just watched his kid fly over the roof of a car and get run over.

When I was researching this movie, I saw that someone on Letterboxd referred to its soundtrack as dull and plodding. I want to go total Inspector Belli on that person, throwing the kind of slaps that an Italian action hero is known for. I was humming along the entire film and it’s been trapped in my head ever since. I don’t know how anyone could watch this and not fall in love with this movie.

I’m still trying to figure this out.

Made as Nightmare at Blood Castle, this is about Dr. Arthur Blackwood (Bill Greer, who co-wrote the script with Deedy Peters, who were a comedy team; he would go on to write and produce House Calls, Goodnight Beantown and Charles In Charge; she would be in 17 episodes of House Calls), who runs his own sanitarium and is doing experiments on the forces of evil. Deedy also plays his wife in this, who is working with the sheriff (Jim Dean) to figure out why some teens have been killed. She should be looking inside her own house, as her husband has a hunchback (Pierre Agostino) and they’re whipping girls and locking people up in cages.

This is the kind of movie that has a wig budget, a spaghetti monster, guillotine suicide and dialogue with lines such as “When I saw Mr. Zolak’s head severed from his body, I felt a definite sexual thrill. I must be very careful.” Also snakes.

Somehow, this is PG. 1970s PG. You know what that means.

Director Charles Nizet also made The Ravager, Voodoo Heartbeat and Rescue Force. There’s nothing like this, a regional movie in the desert that has women put in coffins with poisonous snakes and it feels perverted but it’s not as dirty as it feels, which means that it’s really deranged.

A cave blows up at the end. I still, as I said, have no idea why.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Here’s a drink.

Spaghetti Monster (based on the drink from Strawbs Bar in Leeds, England)

• 1 oz. vodka
• 1 oz. gin
• 1 oz. rum
• 1 oz. tequila
• 4 oz. orange juice
• .5 oz. grenadine

1. Shake up everything with ice in a cocktail shaker other than the grenadine.
2. Pour in a glass and top with grenadine.