Prefect Cesare Mori (Giuliano Gemma, A Pistol for Ringo) has been given special legal powers thanks to Mussolini to fight organized crime in Palermo.  Working with Officer Francesco Spanò (Stefano Satta Flores), he walks right into the home of boss Antonio Capecelatro (Rik Battaglia) and shoots him in the head before going so far as to cause the suicide of Don Calogero Albanese (Francisco Rabal), a man who escaped the police for four decades.

Based on the true story of Cesare Mori, a man whose attacks on organized crime found it moving to America and back to Sicily after the end of World War II. He arrested and convicted thousands of criminals before he was made a senator. Some say because he went after highly-ranked government officials and they needed him to leave town before they were implicated. Mori spoke up against Mussolini working with Hitler and found himself removed from power afterward.

Directed by Pasquale Squitieri, who wrote this with Arrigo Petacco and Ugo Pirro, this film also boasts an appearance by Claudia Cardinale and a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. It has the alternate title I Am the Law, which seems like it inspired a certain judge from Mega City One.

The Radiance Films blu ray of The Iron Prefect comes with an archival interview with director Pasquale Squitieri and star Giuliano Gemma, a new interview with the biographer Domenico Monetti, an appreciation of Giuliano Gemma and the film by filmmaker Alex Cox — yes, the director of Repo Man — as well as the original trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Italian cinema expert Guido Bonsaver and an original article on the real-life Cesare Mori and his Mafia raid as depicted within the film.

You can get this from MVD.

Radiance has released this set that has three crime movies starring Franco Nero and directed by Damiano Damiani. As a proud Italian-American, I must remind you that there is no organized crime syndicate known as the Mafia currently active in the United States.

The Day of the Owl: Franco Nero is Captain Bellodi, who starts this investigating the death of truck driver Salvatore Colasberna, a man murdered while delivering cement to a construction project. The only witness may be Rosa Nicolosi (Claudia Cardinale), a woman of somewhat loose morals. Either her husband caught her with Colasberna or the trucker was killed by a corrupt group of manufacturers under the orders of Don Mariano Arena (Lee J. Cobb).

This was one of the first of a wave of organized crime based films. The trend started when the Leonardo Sciascia’s novel To Each His Own was adapted as We Still Kill the Old Way. Day of the Owl was based on another Sciascia novel which was the first book he’d written about organized crime in Sicily.

Written by director Damiano Damiani and Ugo Pirro, who also wrote We Still Kill the Old Way, this differs from the book that it’s based on. Piro said, “To me, the book is a hint: I must try and preserve its message by using a different language.”

The Case Is Closed: Forget It: Based on the Leros Pittoni book Tante Sbarre, this has Franco Nero on the wrong side of the law as Vanzi, a man jailed for a hit and run misdemeanor and learning just how bad it is inside Italy’s prison system. That’s because organized crime runs everything even inside.

Vanzi tries not to get involved with the others, but soon is helped by an elderly prisoner by the name of Campoloni (Georges Wilson) and hindered by Biro (John Steiner), a killer who is barely able to keep himself under control. When Vanzi is moved into a cell with Pesenti (Riccardo Cucciolla), he learns that his new roommate is about to testify against Salvatore Rosa (Claudio Nicastro), which gets him killed right in front of Vanzi, who can either get out of prison if he says nothing or die if he reveals that the suicide was truly a murder.

This isn’t like any other role I’ve seen Franco Nero in and the ending is a gut punch. Expected, but still it’s a rough indictment.

How to Kill a Judge: Franco Nero plays filmmaker Giacomo Solaris, whose latest film, Inquest at the Courthouse, is based on the real-life corruption of a judge named Alberto Traini-Luiz (Marco Guglielmi). That movie ends with that man’s ties to organized crime causing him to be killed and when the actual judge seizes the film, he’s killed as well.

Solaris feels that he is responsible, but soon finds himself in a world filled with conspiracy and the murder of everyone close to him, as well as a relationship with the judge’s widow Antonia (Françoise Fabian).

This movie is just as tough on director Damiani, as it was inspired by the actual murder of a judge who he had based a character on in his movie Confessions of a Police Captain.

This set from Radiance has tons of amazing extras to go with the new 2K restorations of the films.

There are new and archival interviews with Nero for all three films, as well as filmmaker and Italian crime cinema expert Mike Malloy discussing The Day of the Owl, a video essay by filmmaker Howard S. Berger looking at actor Lee J. Cobb’s career transition from Hollywood to Italy, an interview with Claudia Cardinale, a making-of for The Case is Closed: Forget It; a visual essay on the career of Damiani Damiani by critic Rachael Nisbet; interview with Alberto Pezzotta, author of Regia Damiano Damiani, who discusses Damiani’s contribution to the crime genre, a new video essay on How to Kill a Judge by filmmaker David Cairns; trailers for all three movies, a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters for each film and — most awesomely, I may add — a limited edition 120-page book featuring new and archival writing on the films by experts on the genre including Andrew Nette, Piero Garofalo, Paul A. J. Lewis , Shelley O’Brien, Nathaniel Thompson, Marco Natoli and Cullen Gallagher.

You can get this incredible set from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Killer Klowns from Outer Space aired on USA Up All Night on October 18, 1997.

How did it take so long for this movie to make it to our site? Has there ever been a better high concept — alien clowns coming from space to eat humans? How did this movie even get made? Man, I have questions. Let’s get some answers.

It’s the only movie to be written, produced and directed by the Chiodo Brothers. These insane masters created the puppets and effects for films such as Critters, Ernest Scared Stupid, Team America: World Police, Large Marge for Pee-wee’s Big Adventure and the mouse artwork in Dinner for Schmucks. A sequel to this has been in development forever; if I had my way, these guys would make movies all of the time.

On a lover’s lane in Crescent Cove, Mike Tobacco (Grant Cramer, New Year’s Evil) and his girlfriend Debbie Stone (Suzanne Snyder, Weird Science, Night of the Creeps) are parked when a strange object falls to Earth.

Meanwhile, farmer Gene Green (Royal Dano, Gramps from House II) and his dog — who my wife knows is named Pooh Bear without even needing to look it up — track the comet and discover the crash site looks more like a circus tent.

Mike and Debbie find the same strange tent and discover the farmer trapped in a cotton candy-like cocoon as a Klown appears to shoot popcorn at them. They’re chased away by more Klowns and a balloon animal dog, because this movie is ready to tear out your brain, stomp on it and laugh the entire time.

They make their way to the police station where Debbie’s ex-boyfriend, Deputy Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson, Deathstalker from the third version of that film, Deathstalker III: The Warriors from Hell), and mean-spirited Deputy Curtis Mooney (John Vernon!). Seriously, John Vernon should be in every movie, because he’s majestic in this, treating every single person with oodles of contempt.

The Klowns make their way to the town and start blasting people with lasers, punching people’s heads clean off and shrinking people down and putting them into bags of popcorn. There are also scenes of Klowns drinking people with crazy straws and a giant Klownzilla that attacks the town. Obviously, the reality went right of the window with this one. It resembles the Topps Mars Attacks! cards, with episodic encounters of the goofball Klowns running wild.

This movie frightened my wife worse than any of the many, many films that she watched in her childhood. She was already afraid of clowns, so these Klowns ended up infiltrating her dreams. Yet she still watched it all of the time. She also wanted Debbie’s jumper-tastic wardrobe, which makes a lot of sense when you see her fashion sense today.

While the Chiodos were able to get The Dickies for the soundtrack, they couldn’t convince producers to pay the money to have Soupy Sales — the king of getting pies thrown in his face — appear as a security guard.

This is the kind of movie that I’m glad exists. I return to it time and time again whenever life seems meaningless because the fact that a movie about giant Klowns attacking a small town for food makes me feel better, knowing that somehow a studio bought this and allowed it to happen.

Al Pacino was working out at a New York City YMCA when he met New York state supreme court Judge Edwin Torres, the writer of Carlito’s Way and After Hours, the books this movie is based on. He’d tried several times to make a film version — even facing a 1989 lawsuit where he went back on his agreement to make the movie with Brando as lawyer David Kleinfeld — and screenwriter David Koepp and producer Martin Bregman to develop the shooting script for this movie, one that Pacino felt would work for himself.

Brian De Palma didn’t want to make another Scarface, but that’s exactly what critics said, saying that he was going back to that movie and The Untouchables.

How could they watch the train sequence that closes the film and see Pacino’s character stare at the billboard and have it come to life with the love of his life, Gail (Penelope Ann Miller) dancing as he drifts off and not be in love with all that is cinema?

Five years in on a three decade jail sentence, Carlito Brigante (Pacino) gets out thanks to a technicality found by his friend and lawyer, Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn). He tries to follow the straight and narrow, but follows his cousin Guajiro (John Augstin Ortiz) on a drug deal that goes wrong. The young man is killed, but the $30,000 from the crime allows Carlito to buy into a nightclub and save up for retirement in the Caribbean.

From his interactions with Benny Blanco from the Bronx (John Leguizamo) to trying to win back over Gail and the prison break to try and get Tony Taglialucci out of Riker’s, this is a movie of Carlito torn between wanting to escape this life of violence and blood yet always getting pulled back in.

Despite wanting to distance this movie from Scarface, the nightclub is called El Paraíso which is the same name as the food stand that Tony Montana worked at.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD release of Carlito’s Way has limited edition packaging with reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Obviously Creative, as well as a double-sided fold-out poster featuring newly commissioned artwork by Tom Ralston and Obviously Creative.

Beyond all that, it has seven double-sided, postcard-sized lobby card reproductions and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Barry Forshaw and original production notes.

There are also two new audio commentaries, one by Matt Zoller Seitz, author of The Wes Anderson Collection and The Soprano Sessions, and the other by Dr. Douglas Keesey, author of Brian De Palma’s Split-Screen: A Life in Film.

Want more? This also has interviews with Judge Edwin Torres, author of the novels Carlito’s Way and After Hours on which the screenplay for Carlito’s Way is based and editors Bill Pankow and Kristina Boden. There’s an appreciation of the movie by film critic David Edelstein, a look at the film’s locations, an archival interview with Brian DePalma and the making of doc that was on the original DVD. Plus deleted scenes, a promotional feature, the theatrical teaser and trailer, and an image gallery. Woah!

You can get this from MVD.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Monster High aired on USA Up All Night on April 30 and August 6, 1994 and January 27 and August 25, 1995.

WARNING: Some scenes may be considered objectionable by sensitive viewers, dead people and farm animals. On the other hand, if you like that sort of thing…

Dume (Robert Lind) and Glume (Sean Haines) have brought a doomsday weapon named Mr. Armageddon (David Marriott) to Earth and let him loose on Montgomery Sterling High where eventually, everyone has to play basketball against him and his monsters to stop the end of everything for the next thousand years.

Along the way, there’s a spray can that leaves killer condoms on people’s faces, a horny gargoyle made out of rubber, zombies, a mummy and characters with names like Mel Anoma, Miss Anne Thrope, Slisa Beealzeberg, Coach Otto Parts, Norm Median and Candice Caine. There’s also a literal killer weed; that is marijuana as a murderous plant.

Somehow, people allowed director Rudiger Poe and writers Roy Langsdon and John Platt to work again. Poe would also direct a video called  Imagine It!² the Power of Imagination that I wished that he had watched before he made this movie. He was also a producer for several Playboy videos that had college girls, girls next door, Farrah Fawcett, the women of Enron, Chyna, girls of reality TV, Pamela Anderson, the women of Fear Factor and the women of Starbucks. As for Langson and Platt, they would write The Forbidden Dance and the Graydon Clark movie Out of Sight, Out of Mind a year later.

Diane Frank, the French actress who stars in this as Candice Cain, was also in some other USA Up All Night movies like Mankillers and Eyes of the Serpent. If you’re the type who notices these things, she has multiple nude doubles in this movie and none of her breasts look alike from one scene to the next.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Hollywood Hot Tubs aired on USA Up All Night on May 18 and September 15, 1993; October 7, 1993 and September 22, 1995.

Chuck Vincent made a lot of residuals off USA Up All Night. So many of his films played so often on the show that it’s an even bigger shame that he died in 1991 from AIDS. He also had a deal with the Playboy Channel, so he was definitely doing well before leaving this planet way too soon.

Vincent started in the adult industry and a lot of the things he learned there would serve him well as he made softcore comedies like this movie. Working from a script by Mark Borde (who also wrote Vincent’s Summer Camp and would go on to produce 47 Meters Down and Replicas) and Craig Horrall (Bad Blood, Thrilled to Death), this is the tale of Shawn Wright (Paul Gunning), who has defaced the Hollywood sign so that it now reads Hollyweed. He’s forced to choose between work and jail, so he’s soon working as a hot tub plumber for his Uncle Al (Stafford Morgan) along with Jeff (Michael Andrew).

The guys end up working for all sorts of weird clients, like an aging movie starlet with a hot tub inside her limousine, a theme park run by organized crime and a porn star. Then they get the chance to work with Pam (Remy O’Neill), who is opening a huge apartment complex. Uncle Al is nervous because he’s always just been on the wrong side of going out of business. Success frightens him more than failure.

Shawn falls for co-worker Leslie (Donna McDaniel), but you know how the third act works. She catches him in the hot tub all alone with several nude women. Now her brother Jesse (Rex Ryon) wants to kill him. And his probation officer thinks that Uncle Al can’t be a legal business owner, so he wants to send Shawn to jail.

The best part of this movie is Crystal Shepard as Pam’s valley girl daughter Crystal who, for some reason, has stars in her eyes for Uncle Al. Never doubt the power of daddy talk, I guess.

There are also roles for Katt Shea, who would go onward and upward, directing her own worthy films like Stripped to Kill, Stripped to Kill 2: Live Nude Girls, Streets, Poison Ivy, The Rage: Carrie 2 and Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase; Edy Williams (Ashley St. Ives herself!); Florence Schuaffuler (Haggis from Pumpkinhead); Becky LeBeau (Not of This Earth, School Spirit) and Tina Blum (Summer Camp Nightmare).

Just the title is good enough, you know? That may be why there was a sequel, Hollywood Hot Tubs 2: Educating Crystal. That was directed by Kenneth Raich — the co-producer of this movie — and luckily had Shepherd return to the role.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Raiders of the Living Dead definitely aired on USA Up All Night — I remember watching it! — even if my lists can’t give me an exact date.

A regional New Hampshire film with a synth score that was reedited with new footage by Sam Sherman with that iconic Independent-International Pictures logo at the start of the show?

If you’re wondering, “Is it weird?” My answer is, “Would it be on our site if it wasn’t?”

While filming on this movie originally began in New Hampshire by co-writer Brett Piper as a movie called Graveyard, it was finished by writer-producer Samuel Sherman, the man who formed Independent-International Pictures with Al Adamson.

In an abandoned prison, a doctor is using executed convicts to form a labor force of the living dead. Meanwhile, Jonathan (the one-time Flick and future adult actor Scott Schwartz) has turned his dad’s LaserDisc into a laser gun and decides that he should hunt down zombies with the help of his girlfriend, grandfather, a reporter and a librarian (who was played by Zita Johann, the female star of Universal’s The Mummy, lured out of retirement by Sherman).

There are three versions of this. A sixty-minute version by Piper called Dying Day, an initial take on the footage by Sherman called Dark Night and then Raiders of the Living Dead, which is one of the best carny movie titles ever.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Girls Nite Out definitely aired on USA Up All Night — I remember watching it! — even if my lists can’t give me an exact date.

First off, the fact that one of the posters for this film rips off Night School‘s art makes me love it before I’ve even seen one second of footage. Second, when I did watch it, it so shamelessly takes from other slashers that you’d very nearly be convinced that it was made in Italy.

Originally released as The Scaremaker, this was shot over the weekend at New Jersey’s Upsala College. That means that most of the scenes were shot in two takes or less.

After Dickie Cavanaugh kills his girlfriend in a jealous rage, gets committed and then hangs himself, all hell breaks loose. The men trying to bury him are killed and the school’s all-night scavenger hunt could not come at a worse time. Yes, I had no idea that when your college basketball team wins the big game everyone has to engage in just such a contest.

There’s a killer on the loose wearing the school’s bear costume, using serrated knives as if they were bear claws. There are lots of POV shots as if you’re being attacked by the bear and I always enjoy being the participant in a bear battle.

For a movie made on a shoestring, they got some big names. Hal Holbrook is on hand! Julia Montgomery from Revenge of the Nerds and Stewardess School (yes, she’s a star in my world)! Lauren-Marie Taylor (Vickie from the second Friday the 13th)! Page Mosely (who is something of a scream queen, with appearances in Open House, Edge of the Axe and this movie)! And most importantly Rutanya Alda, who makes this film all hers in the last few minutes, despite the fact that this movie rips off Mrs. Vorhees’ motivation, as all lower-level slashers must. I love Rutanya, who claims that she still hasn’t been paid her $5,000 fee for this movie. She should get way more than that, as the close is literally made so much better because of her commitment to more than one role.

If you’ve seen the trailers or poster for this, you may wonder, “Where are the girls in the artwork? Who is this girl in the trailer?” You are right to question these things, as the sales material was made reverse-Corman, in that it was created years after the film was complete.

EDITOR’S NOTE: H.O.T.S. aired on USA Up All Night on May 11 and September 15, 1990; March 2, 1991; January 4, 1992; February 19 and March 20, 1993; March 4 and October 22, 1994 and May 5, 1995.

Honey Shayne (Susan Kiger, Playboy Playmate of the Month for January 1977; Angels Revenge, Galaxina, Death Screams), O’Hara (Lisa London, Savage Beach), Teri Lynn (Pamela Bryant, Playboy Playmate of the Month for April 1978; Don’t Answer the Phone) and Sam (Kimberly Cameron,) have come together to start the H.O.T.S. after Honey fails to pledge the Pi sorority and is publicly ridiculed by its president Melody Ragmore (Lindsay Bloom, a former Miss Utah who was in Sixpack Annie, The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood and Terror At London Bridge). Their goal? Steal all the Pi girls’ boys.

Oh Fairenville University. God old F.U. This is the kind of school where pranks happen all day long, where there are kissing booths, where public strip football is attended by a huge crowd. Is it any wonder why college for real would disappoint so many of us raised on movies like this? And we had to pay for it for the rest of our lives?

At one point, Melody Ragmore says, “Everyone knows what H.O.T.S. stands for, and it’s disgusting!” What does it mean? Well, it could stand for Hands Off Those Suckers. Or Help Out The Seals. Maybe Hold On To Sex. But it really is the first names of the four main girls.

This is a movie where someone is naked — well, someone female, come on — every scene while two old criminals (Dick Bakalyan and Louis Guss) are digging through the house for stolen money. The plot is so thin but then again, it also has a scene with a naked parachute girl — Boom-Boom Bangs (Angela Aames, Bo Peep in Fairy Tales; she’s also in Chopping Mall and Bachelor Party) — skydiving into the pool of the dean while an unfortunate opera singer (Bunny Summers, Mrs. Boone from The Last Starfighter) is performing, a moment that made me stare at the screen and forget work and life and the crushing ennui of trying to make it in the midst of crushing disappointment. Thanks, H.O.T.S.!

The cast also includes Mary Steelsmith as the too large for most sororities Clutz (she’s also in Death Valley and Weird Science); Marjorie Andrade; Karen Smith (Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, X-Ray, Freaky Friday); K.C. Winkler (The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood — a movie that has a lot of the same actresses as this movie — and Armed and Dangerous); Sandy Johnson as Stephanie (she started posing nude to pay for her father’s cancer bill; you probably know her best as Judith Myers; she’s also in Jokes My Folks Never Told Me, Surfer Girls and Gas Pump Girls); Donald Petrie (who would go on to direct Mystic Pizza, Welcome to Mooseport, Miss Congeniality and How To Lose a Guy In 10 Days); Larry Gillman (Final Destination); Danny Bonaduce, who of course gets to sing; Marvin Katzoff (who played a geek in Hardbodies and Delta Pi; he’s also in Lovely but Deadly); Steve Bond (Massacre At Central High, Gas Pump Girls); Tallmadge Scott (who fought Jackie Chan in Battle Creek Brawl and was a zombie in Shock Waves); Slinky the seal and Sugar Bear as the bear Honey Bear.

This was directed by Gerald Seth Sindell, who also made the way better than it should be film Teenager. It was written by producer W. Terry Davis, Joan Buchanan and associate producer Cheri Caffaro. If her name sounds familiar, that’s because she’s Ginger McAllister from Ginger, The Abductors and Girls Are For Loving. She was also in Savage Sisters and Too Hot to Handle. So yes, this may be a basic T&A movie, but it made money for the woman who wrote and produced it.