Known as Fuga dall’arcipelago maledetto (Escape from the Cursed Archipelago) in Italy, this Antonio Margheriti-directed and Tito Capri-written film stars David Warbeck as Tiger Joe, a former US Army Special Forces Vietnam Veteran who works with “Midnight” Washington (Tony King, Atlantis Interceptors) and Lenny (Luciano Pigozzi) to airlift all sorts of cargo but mostly guns.
When he gets shot down, he joins up with Kia (Annie Belle, who started her acting career appearing in Jean Rollin’s Lips of Bloodand BacchanalesSexuelles; she’s in so many movies by directors and personalities I’m obsessed with: Deodato’s House On the Edge of the Park, D’Amato’s Absurdand L’alcova, the supposed Emmanuelle Arsan-directed Forever Emmanuelle, Marco Antonio Andolfi’s Cross of the Seven Jewels and the Cannon film Nana) and her companion Datu (Abadeza) to get out of the jungle alive.
This has a lot of cast, crew and shots from the much better The Last Hunter, but I just love Antonio Margheriti. He brings something extra to every movie. Sadly, cinematographer Riccardo Pallottini lost his life in a plane crash while filming the final shot of the film.
May I never ever get tired of seeing bamboo huts in the Philippines blow up. If you want more Margherti in the jungle, check out Tornado: The Last Blood, Code Name: Wild Geese, The Last Hunter, Commando Leopard, The Commander, Indio and Indio 2: The Revolt.
June 13: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Animals! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
There are a lot of people who reckon with the art versus artist and worlds of troubling media all the time. Like, well, me. Because if you watch a lot of Italian cinema eventually you will come across a very casual — one would say cruel — attitude about the way animals are treated in their exploitation cinema. From the way horses are thrown around in their Westerns to mondo and cannibal films that are outright celebrations of butchery, Italian cinema can test one’s love of nature. Then again, you go and eat processed meat for dinner and enable an incredibly more brutal industry, so perhaps we all have something to atone for.
Regardless, the first time I watched The Wild Beasts, I made it as far as the credits, where a horse’s parts — including its head and out of mouth tongue — are cut to pieces on camera and served to several wild cats. It jarred me so much that I just couldn’t deal with anything after.
Years later, I feel that my explorations into the dark heart of the cinema of my home country have scarred me to feelings like this. After all, this movie was directed by Franco E. Prosperi, who was part of the team with Gualtiero Jacopetti that popularized the mondo genre. The only fictional movie that Prosperi ever made, Wild Beasts is a rough watch but in no way as senses destroying as the other movies Prosperi had a hand in making, such as the two Mondo Cane films, Africa Blood and Gutsor perhaps the most upsetting movie I’ve ever endured, Goodbye Uncle Tom.
But he’s going to try.
There have been ecohorror movies before and animal attacks shared as horror. But when you hear “Italian animal attack movie,” you worry that you just might not be able to deal with what you get.
Wild Beasts starts with what we Italian film lovers affectionately refer to as bullshit science. PCP has been released in the water supply of Frankfort and is mostly concentrated in the zoo. That means that every animal there that drinks water has found itself in a severe psychotic state where they feel no pain, experience time differently and are floating in a haze. They also have decided that this is when humanity must pay, like Day of the Animals but way, way worse.
This would be a big problem already, but then there’s also the issue of the new computerized security system at the zoo. Of course it fails, because technology always fails in animal attack movies. And even if it didn’t, the elephants have lost their minds and rampage through a wall, unleashing an entire jungle of apex predators into the streets where they’re free to shred people into the same kind of meat as that horse. Now, I cheer that on while the horse bothers me, but I also know that for the most part, the stunts didn’t scar people for life or kill anyone. This wasn’t Roar, a movie where every single member of the cast and crew was nearly killed and Melanie Griffith was scalped.
The movie also begins with a quote from Francis Thrive that says “Our madness engulfs everything and infects innocent victims such as children or animals.” Again, if you’ve watched enough Italian genre movies, you start to understand that their creators have a propensity to not only make up quotes, they even make up authors. This high minded introduction to a low minded movie doesn’t come from some great philosopher. Francis Thrive is Franco E. Prosperi. Thanks for confirming my suspicions, Bleeding Skull.
From here on lies animal madness. After a short setup — we meet zoologist Dr. Rupert Berner (Antonio Di Leo) as he works with the big cats he meets reporter Laura Schwarz (Lorraine De Selle, who really endured the worse of Italy’s excesses in movies like Cannibal Ferox, Emanuelle in America, Violence in a Women’s Prison and its sister film Women’s Prison Massacre, House On the Edge of the Park, the Joe Dallesandro-starring Madness and S. S. Extermination Camp), a mother that obviously hates her deranged daughter Suzy (Louisa Lloyd) who keeps calling her and making noises on the phone with her frog puppet. How much does she despise her child? A line of dialogue in this movie is “Children are extraterrestrials that come from outer space to destroy their parents.”
From here on out, all is lost. A couple batter-dipping the corn dog in the back of a car are swarmed by rats — which also destroy a cat and in no way does that scene seem fake — and killed. The only way to stop these rats is with flamethrowers and yes, this being Italian cinema, I believed that every rat set ablaze and stomped was real, just like in Rats: The Night of Terror, the only film I’ve seen that equal this level of human on rat and rat on human trauma.
Yet the animal wilding is not done yet. No, a cheetah runs wild through the streets — this is set up to look like perhaps Seattle at times and says its Frankfort and a “northern European city” but it’s really Rome and Hamburg — as an entire army of animals stampedes down the empty shopping districts in near surreal moments. The cheetah catches up to a woman in a Volkswagen bug which leads to this line of what should be award-winning writing:
Inspector Nat Braun: Is she out of her mind?
Dr. Rupert Berner: No she’s not crazy, she’s being chased by a cheetah!
The woman slams into another car and is burned up to the point that she looks like she’s possessed. These two learned men just pick her limp body up and throw it in the back of their car while the cheetah keeps running about, joined by hyenas that attack a slaughterhouse — yes, that’s really a pig being destroyed and you may wonder, “Well, it was going to get sliced up by humans,” but do you need to justify this any more? — and elephants stomp an airplane to pieces and a tiger gets loose inside a subway car.
Here’s where you can cheer, as an elephant stepped on Prosperi’s foot during the filming of the airport sequence. And the tiger got loose in the subway station and hid in a bathroom before deciding to go on top of a train. And Di Leo was nearly decapitated by the polar bear that wanders through the hallways of a school. Anything for art, right? Or sleaze.
Remember that ballet school? The place where Laura is supposed to get her daughter? Well, all the kids drank the water and little Tommy has already killed his teacher with a hatchet and is asking who wants to play his favorite game with him called Playing Dead.
If you’ve made it through these thousand words and said, “This sounds more like a mondo than a narrative movie,” you’re right. It’s a collection of moments set to knock your brain out of your skull. This is also a disaster movie that spends all of a minute setting up the human drama and then deciding that none of those issues need resolution and instead, know that we came here to watch people get torn to bloody pieces. It delivers.
It’s also a movie that remembers how wild it gets when Dickie attacks Emily at the end of The Beyond and gives us a scene where a dog bites the hand that feeds of its blind owner while he’s trying to listen to classical music.
I love that after building the tension for an entire movie, it ends with type on the screen saying that everything is alright. Or is it?
Also this movie is the worst — or best, honestly — of exploitation because it has this message about animals and why they’re important and then it destroys them. Some folks claim this has a disclaimer that no animals were injured in the making of this movie, but we all know that that is outright bullshit. I mean, Prosperi and Jacopetti may have flown a time travel helicopter to share a message about America’s slavery past — but really Goodbye Uncle Tom was shot using the real slaves of Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier.
It’s hard to give a trigger warning when this whole movie is a giant gun pointing directly at your face.
This Saturday, A.C. Nicholas brings filth to the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature as Bill and I giggle in glee starting at 8 PM EST. Watch from the safety of the Groovy Doom Facebook and YouTube channels.
Up first, Mantis In Lace, filled with drug use, topless dancing, strobing and zooming camerawork and death. You can watch it on YouTube.
Every week, we watch two movies with you. Plus, we discuss their creation, why they’re important, their ad campaigns and have a drink for each film. Here’s the first recipe.
Praying Mantis
1.5 oz. tequila
5 oz. cola
1 tsp. lemon juice
2 tsp. lime juice
Shake the tequila and juices with ice.
Pour into a glass and top with cola.
The second movie is the somehow even more filthy Behind Locked Doors, which you can also watch on YouTube.
Here’s the second drink.
Swinger Party
2 oz. Absolut Citron
1 oz. Cointreau
1 oz. lime juice
2 oz. Hawaiian Punch
2 oz. orange juice
2 oz. pineapple juice
Frozen fruit cocktail
Throw everything in the shaker like they’re keys at a party in The Ice Storm.
Shake it up, drink it all and see who goes home with who.
Building on the ALF content on the site today — don’t forget to read about Project ALF — Shout! Factory has even more news!
Shout! TV proudly presents ALF on ALF, a hilarious reunion of ALF and series co-creators Tom Patchett and Paul Fusco. Watch along as ALF provides lively behind-the-scenes commentary with help from series creators Patchett and Fusco. The classic television series with all-new playful commentary will stream on June 24th at 8pm EST / 5pm PST, only on Shout! TV. The special will also feature pop-up ALF facts throughout. Episodes featured with all-new commentary include:
A.L.F. (Pilot)
La Cucaracha (S1E25)
Working My Way Back To You (S2E1)
Some Enchanted Evening (S2E6)
ALF follows the adventures of Gordon Shumway, a wise-cracking alien from the planet Melmac who crash lands into the garage of the Tanner family. The Tanners offer him a home and give him the nickname ALF, short for “Alien Life Form.” Created by Tom Patchett (The Carol Burnett Show) and Paul Fusco (puppeteer and voice of ALF), the popular sitcom is a staple of 1980s pop culture and has developed a cult following in the years since.
The episodes will air on Shout! TV on June 24th at 8pm EST / 5pm PST, with an encore presentation on July 2nd at 8pm EST / 5pm PST. The stream can be viewed on Shout! TV; as well as the Shout! TV app on Roku, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, and Android; and the following digital streaming platforms – Amazon Freevee, Amazon Prime Channels, Local Now, Plex, Pluto TV, Redbox, The Roku Channel, Roku Premium Subscriptions, Samsung TV Plus, Sling TV, STIRR, Streamium, TCL, Tubi, Twitch, and XUMO.
On March 24, 1990, NBC aired the final episode of Alf.
The main character on the show was, well, ALF (Alien Life Form). No one used his real name, Gordon Shumway. He came from the exploded world of Melmac to Earth, smashing into the garage of the suburban middle-class Tanner family who are made up of Willie (Max Wright), Kate (Anne Schedeen), Lynn (Andrea Elson), Brian (Benji Gregory), cat Lucky and later baby Eric.
ALF was such a big deal that there were stuffed toys at Burger King and a cartoon series, which was infamous for one episode supposedly having a subliminal message.
For four seasons, the family dealt with the completely rude and often hilarious being and kept him safe from the Alien Task Force. And Alf also made plenty of friends, including Willie’s brother Neal (Jim J. Bullock), a psychologist named Larry (Bill Daily) and Jody (Andrea Covell), a blind woman who falls in love with him.
ALF was incredibly difficult to make, so much so that in a People article in 2000, everyone admitted that people were constantly freaking out on the set. Max Wright hated every minute of it, losing most of the laugh lines to a puppet. He supposedly even physically attacked ALF once. That said, in the same article, he was more open-minded about the show, saying “It doesn’t matter what I felt or what the days were like, ALF brought people a lot of joy.”
Yet after the final episode, “Consider Me Gone,” Anne Schedeen said that after the final take, “there was one take and Max walked off the set, went to his dressing room, got his bags, went to his car and disappeared… There were no goodbyes.”
I always wondered why the show ended, but now that I know more, I feel for the cast. Schedeen also reported that “It’s astonishing that ALF really was wonderful and that word never got out what a mess our set really was.”
One example is her TV daughter Andrea Elson. After suffering from bulimia during the show, she admitted that if the show went one more year, everyone would have really lost their minds.
That said, ALF was in tenth place in season 2 and never went below 39th place. The kind of ratings it got back then would be a huge success today. By season 4, NBC was on the bubble, so the show did a cliffhanger. Then they got a verbal commitment from NBC. But then the show never came back.
Imagine being a child when the true worry of the show finally came true. ALF was taken by the government to be dissected after he missed aliens from New Melmac coming to rescue him. It said “To be continued,” but it never was. NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff would years later tell puppeteer Fusco “It was a big mistake that we canceled your show, because you guys had at least one or two more seasons left.”
ABC would finally resolve the cliffhanger six years later with Project:ALF.
Project: Alf is one strange movie. On one hand, it has plenty of the humor of the original show. But it comes off as gallows humor, as ALF is detained at Edmonds Air Force Base and constantly being threatened by Colonel Gilbert Milfoil (Martin Sheen). He’s finally had enough and plans to incinerate the creature, despite how beloved he is by the base. Of course, ALF has taken advantage of everyone, creating a black market out of a hangar and continually winning money playing poker.
As for the Tanner family, they used the Witness Protection Program to go to Iceland.
Two of the scientists, Major Melissa Hill (Jensen Daggett, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan) and Captain Rick Mullican (William O’Leary, who was on Home Improvement playing the husband of his co-star Daggett) kidnap ALF and take him on the run where he meets Ray Walston — once My Favorite Martian — as a motel clerk and goes to the Kitty Kat Lounge, which he thinks is a buffet but ends up being filled with exotic dancers.
He finally ends up in the orbit of Dexter Moyers (Miguel Ferrer), who was nearly one of the men on the moon ad has now been discredited by the government. He’s going on a Piers Morgan-esque show where he will publicly show ALF to the world but Minfoil wants to exterminate Gordon Shumway before that can happen.
There’s a wild cast in this. Beyond Sheen and Ferrer, there’s John Schuck, Ed Begley, Jr., Charlie Robinson (Mac from Night Court), Beverly Archer (who was Mrs. Byrd on the original show), Ahmet Zappa and even a robot that seems to be set up to be the Higgins for ALF if this ever became a series.
The movie was directed by Dick Lowry (Smokey and the Bandit Part 3, Archie: To Riverdale and Back Again, In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders, The Gambler, The Jayne Mansfield Story) and written by Tom Patchett, who was one of the creators of ALF along with Paul Fusco, who returns to play ALF. Patchett also created the shows Buffalo Bill and The Tony Randall Show, as well as writing Up the Academy, The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Take Manhattan.
I really enjoyed this, as it brought back happy memories from my late teen years. I think you’ll feel the same way.
Project Alf is now available on blu ray from Liberation Hall, who have been releasing some interesting TV movies lately. It has a photo gallery, a trailer and an interview with creator Paul Fusco. You can get it from MVD.
The “Skull Monster” Red King — Reddo Kingu phonetically in Japanese — has been a fan favorite since he was introduced back in a live stage show that went in-between Ultra-Q and Ultraman. It had the Ultra Q monsters — Garamon, Kanegon and M1 — destroying a lab and being joined by Antlar, Alien Baltan, Chandlar and their leader, Red King, joining in. Only Ultraman could stop them, joined by a chorus of children singing, “The mark in his chest is a meteor / He beats down the enemies proudly with his jet / From the Land of Light for the sake of us / Here he comes, our hero Ultraman.”
Designed by Tohi Narita, Red King was sculpted and built by Ryosaku Takayama. He’s always been blue topped with gold, except in Ultraman: The Ultimate Hero, in which he finally was red. His roar, which is written as Shparr!” — is a combination of Gaira from War of the Gargantuas and Godzilla.
First showing up in the eighth episode of Ultraman, appeared along with Magular, Chandlar and Pigmon, one of the few monsters — maybe because he’s small — that is nice to humans. In that episode, Red King uses his strength — he has no other powers — to rip off Chandlar’s arm and wing, then kill Pigmon under a pile of rocks. Yes, Ultraman was pretty rough but kids back in 1966 were pretty tough.
The Ultraman series were masters of recycling. The Red King suit was later used to make Aboras, then reused when Red King returned to fight Ultraman again in episode 25. The arms were then used for Zetton. These days, however, all the kaiju of Ultraman are their own unique costumers (and they’re much better as costumes and not CGI). Red King Jr. fought Ultraman Taro in episode 40 and would come back as one of the spirits of defeated kaiju that would make the ultimate monster Tyrant. Red King Jr. would become the legs while the other parts were made from Alien Icarus, King Crab, Hanzagiran, Bemstar, Seagorath and Baraba.
From 2005’s Ultraman Max to today, there’s pretty much always been a Red King variant to challenge the Ultras and humans that help them.
You can check them all out in this set from Mill Creek, including the two Red Kings from the original series, Red King III from Ultraman 80, the armored Red King from Ultraman Max and the red Ex Red King from Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle — Never Ending Odyssey.
Other battles between Ultras and Red King on this set include him battling Ultraman Joneus in the animated The Ultraman, Ultraman 80 in Ultraman 80, three battles against DASH and Ultraman Max, a fight against Ultraman Mebius, one fight from Ultraman Galaxy Mega Monster Battle, three appearances against the ZAP SPACY, Gomora and Litra in Ultra Galaxy Mega Monster Battle — Never Ending Odyssey (in which he even kind of becomes good), as a spark doll in Ultraman Ginga and Ultraman Ginga S, and “the most violent Red King of all time” even defeats Ultraman Rosso Aqua and Ultraman Blu Flame in Ultraman R/B.
If you already have all of the Mill Creek sets, you have all of these fights, but it’s a gorgeous package and all of the fights look wonderful on blu ray. I’m so excited to look at it amongst the many Ultraverse movies on my shelf.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on . It’s back as it’s now part of the Enter the Video Store — Empire of Screams box set, which has three different versions of the film via seamless branching: the US theatrical version (The Dungeonmaster), the pre-release version and the international version (Ragewar) plus extras like new audio commentary with star Jeffrey Byron, moderated by film critics Matty Budrewicz and Dave Wain from The Schlock Pit, a new interview with Byron, trailers and an image gallery. You can get this set from MVD.
Let’s face it. I love portmanteau movies. From Tales from the Crypt to Asylum, The House that Dripped Bloodand The Monster Club, a good part of our DVD collection is devoted to these films (mostly of the Amicus variety). 1984’s The Dungeonmaster attempts to be both a narrative and portmanteau all at the same time — to sometimes uneven results.
Also known as Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate and Digital Knights, this Charles Band-produced effort (Puppet Master, Subspecies, Re-Animator) is made up of seven different segments, all connected by the battle between Paul Bradford (Jeffrey Byron, Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn) and Mestema (Richard Moll, who played Bull from TV’s Night Court, as well as The Sword and the Sorcerer, House, Wicked Stepmother and more). Again, it’s a film that struggles to find a tone — it wants to be Tron as much as it wants to be a filmed version of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign.
Paul may not be able to balance a checkbook, but he loves to jog and he’s great at fixing computers. In fact, the dude is so good, he has 2017 iPhone tech that tracks his jogging. If you watch the film today, you’ll be like, “Yeah, so what.” But keep in mind, this is a 33-year-old movie.
At some point, Paul did a neural net experiment that allows him to talk to X-CaliBR, his female personal computer. This is the only futuristic tech in this world, so I guess we all have to accept that people’s brains can be wired to their CPUs.
Paul keeps having dreams where he is making love to a beautiful woman. The more knowledgeable of you out there will realize that this scene doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the movie. It was probably to secure foreign distribution with the amount of flesh on display.
Paul lives with his girlfriend Gwen live together, but she’s super jealous of how close he is to his computer. None of that has anything else to do with what happens next — the sorcerer Mestema — who has spent thousands of years looking for a worthy opponent — kidnaps both of them.
What follows are the portmanteau segments, where Paul and his laser wristband must travel through different dimensions and time to battle Mestema and win back Gwen.
PART 1: ICE GALLERY
Ever seen Waxwork? It seems like everyone working on this may have. That said — the visuals are pretty nice here, with various monsters and killers throughout history all frozen inside a giant cave. Why is Albert Einstein there? Is it a comment on his role in the nuclear bomb? No one ever really explains that — this is a movie that you either damn for being stupid or fill in the narrative gaps yourself.
PART 2: DEMONS OF THE DEAD
I originally learned of this film from the Alamo Drafthouse’s Trailer War compilation. This scene is prominently featured in the trailer, with Fulci-like zombies being dispatched with laser beams. It is, as I am often heard to yell, “Fucking awesome.” It’s written and directed by John Carl Buechler, who was Jack Cracker in the first two Hatchet movies.
PART 3: HEAVY METAL
In this segment, directed by Charles Band, our heroes battle 80s metal kings W.A.S.P. If you love Blackie Lawless, well, this is the movie for you, as he is front and center and menacing Gwen. Sadly, Chris Holmes does not appear with his mother in this scene.
PART 4: STONE CANYON GIANT
Stop motion style fun here, with a giant canyon monster blocking Paul from progress. This segment was written and directed by Dave Allen, who got his start with Equinox and worked on a huge variety of films from Flesh Gordon, Laserblastand The Howling to *batteries not included, Willow, the Puppet Master series, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and so much more. Sadly, he died from cancer in 1999.
In a strange moment of Wiki research, I learned that Allen used to be married to a woman named Donita Woodruff. She learned that Allen had an ex-girlfriend named Valerie Taylor, which led to a fight between the two women. Woodruff suspected that Taylor had a criminal past and found enough evidence to get the police to arrest her in 1996 for a 1979 South Carolina murder. Taylor pleaded self-defense and served two years, while Allen and Woodruff would divorce two years later. There’s even a book about it — Deadly Masquerade: A True Story of Illicit Passion, Buried Secrets, and Murder.
Check this out — “Donita, a young, single mother of two lives in the day-to-day confinement of a small town in rural Oklahoma. Hungering for a second chance and the bustle of the big city, she decides to move her family back home to Los Angeles. Still hurting from previous romantic relationships, Donita is hesitant to start anything new; anything until she meets Academy Award nominee David Allen—successful, handsome and charming. The two are quickly swept up in a whirlwind romance. Life seems too good to be true but even wedding bells can’t hide the secrets her new husband has. Suddenly, Donita and her children are caught in a Deadly Masquerade, a world of vicious lies and double lives, where nothing is as it appears.
Mysterious phone calls, a questionable ex-lover, an unsolved murder, all begin to unravel in Donita Woodruff’s true-life account, Deadly Masquerade. When the perfect man reveals a sordid, double life, she is forced into a series of stunning revelations. Now, she only has one choice—to take matters into her own hands.”
Seriously — they should have just film this book NOW. Because I just learned that Valerie Taylor used to be a man. And that’s why Woodruff was so freaked out! AGAIN –Wikipedia will lead you down some crazy wormholes.
PART 5 – SLASHER
All of a sudden, the film becomes a cross between Quantum Leap and a horror movie. It’s written by lead actor Jeffrey Byron and directed by Steven Ford (the son of former U.S. President Gerald Ford — fuck, this movie has a veritable rogue’s gallery of backstories). Paul has to escape from the police to rescue Glen from a serial killer.
PART 6 – CAVE BEAST
A cave beast blocks the way and Paul must fight his way past it. Look — not all of The Dungeonmaster has to be complicated.
PART 7 – DESERT PURSUIT
Mad Max style racing across the desert that seems to end with our characters dying in a head-on collision in a sequence written and directed by Ted Nicolaou (Bad Channels, TerrorVision). In case you’re wondering, yes, these are the same vehicles from Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.
Finally, Paul challenges Mestema to a one on one battle, which ends when Paul throws the sorcerer into a pit of lava. At this point, Gwen decides that X-CaliBR8 isn’t so bad and that she can finally marry Paul.
Like any portmanteau, there are some good and bad parts in equal measure. Richard Moll is awesome in this, just chewing scenery and blasting out some insane dialogue. The zombie scene is good, as is the giant. But your life won’t change watching this film. If you’re looking for something to put on as a soundtrack to a party or some great visuals, it’s certainly good for that.
PS – A sequel segment was filmed for the anthology Pulse Pounders and only shown once, but since Empire Pictures closed, no one is sure as to when it will be released. Moll and Byron came back for this sequel — which I’d love to see.
Pulse Ponders was to be another portmanteau with three stories: The Evil Clergyman, Trancers: City of Lost Angels and The Dungeonmaster II: A Sorcerer’s Nightmare. Some of it has come out, so here’s to the full release!
Edwige Fenech — who was only just a giallo queen but a star of commedia sexy all’italiana movies — and Pippo Franco had been a success in 1972 in Mariano Laurenti’s Quel gran pezzo dell’Ubalda tutta nuda e tutta calda which was released around the world as Ubalda, All Naked and Warm.
Franco is Ragionier Mario Albertini who has been asked by his boss Commendatore La Noce (Gigi Ballista) to find him a fake wife so that he can get the philandering judge who closed the cheese factory to get in a scandal and reverse his decision. Albertini hires Giovannona “Cocò” Coscialunga (Fenech), a prostitute who looks pure but has the filthiest of mouths.
Directed by Sergio Martino, this was written by Franco Mercuri, Francesco Milizia and Carlo Veo from a story by Tito Carpi and Sergio’s brother Luciano, who was married to Fenech for a time. The cinematographer was Stelvio Massi, who went on to direct Arabella the Black Angel and Convoy Busters.
Italian sex comedies don’t always translate all that well, especially because so many of them are fifty years old. But you know, you get to look at Edwige Fenech for the entire movie. It can’t be that bad.
Elisa (Barbara Cupisti) and Karl (Giuseppe Pianviti) are in a department store at closing time, waiting until no one is watching so that she can steal a shirt. She’s stuck there alone as Karl runs out to get their car and while the store is closed, she sees a secretary get killed by her manager (Alessio Orano)
Or, well, she doesn’t.
Because Elisa is blind.
Directed by Lambero Bava with a script by Giorgio Stegani and Massimo De Rita, this is a made for TV giallo in which police commissioner Marra (Stefano Davanzati) investigates the suspects, which includes the secretary’s lover (Francesco Casale), as well as Elisa and Karl. At the same time, the manager thinks that Elisa knows who he is because he believes that she can sense him.
There are moments here — when it isn’t trying to be Wait Until Dark — when the film aspires toward the giallo of the past. I love the idea of a rehabilitation center for people with disabilities that tries to get them to expand their abilities. And of course the manager tracks down Elisa in the hopes of killing her in a scene that has echoes of Tenebre and “Blind Alleys” from Tales from the Crypt mixed with some incredible POV shots and great editing.
Unlike most giallo, we know the killer from the beginning. But that’s fine. The tension here comes from how close the killer gets to our heroine. And yes, as always, the cops are the absolute worst. Defund the giallo police, I always say.
Florinda Bolkan excels at the role of a woman losing her mind. She’s a force of nature in A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Footprints on the Moon, two films that are placed in the giallo genre but that are centered around her and her fragmented psyche.
She plays Flavia, a young girl who watched her father — who loudly complains that he didn’t have a son but instead a daughter, a curse as he says — cut a man’s head off his shoulders. He locks her up in a convent where she’s abused by the other nuns. Things get worse when she tries to escape. But when she meets Ahmed (Anthony Higgins), the Muslim warrior who has taken over the city, she decides to get her horrific revenge on her former sisters.
This being an Italian movie, there’s an actual horse castration and a naked man climbing inside the hung and torn-apart body of a dead cow as well as a fake nipple slicing that’s pretty stomach upsetting. The real nausea comes from the fact that nearly every man in this movie is the worst person ever. And then Flavia gets skinned alive and we learn, well, that humanity is uniformly terrible.
Director Gianfranco Mingozzi was the second unit director on La Dolce Vita, so this is a bit artier than you may be expecting. It’s still repellant, however. And women have never had a fair shake but hopefully they don’t have to go through all this for much longer to get what’s only right.
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