Electric Wizard is a band that either gets people into movies or finds people who loves those films, finds out that the band referenced them and starts to enjoy their music. It’s perfect for people who love occult-based music and film, as well as no small amount of, well, substances. I don’t think leader Oborn would disagree with me, as he told Kerrang! about a period in th eband’s history: “At the time, we were pretty bad people. I got arrested for arson of a car, outside a police station. Tim went to nick a crucifix off a church roof so we could use it onstage, then slipped, fell off through the window and sliced his arm open. He got community service for that. Then Mark got nicked for robbing an offie. He smashed the window, nicked a bottle of whiskey, then sat there drinking it outside! We weren’t very nice people, to be honest. We were feeding off that shit at the time. It made us feel like we were more of a heavy metal band.”
Started by singer, guitarist and lyricist Oborn in 1993, along with bassist Tim Bagshaw and drummer Mark Greening, Electric Wizard takes its name — and sound — from Black Sabbath. Two of Black Sabbath’s songs, “Electric Funeral” and “The Wizard” were combined for their name.
Their albums Come My Fanatics… and Dopethrone pretty much are everything that speaks to me in doom metal, followed by the just as exciting We Live, Witchcult Today and Black Masses after drummer Justin Greaves, guitarist Liz Buckingham and bassist Rob Al-Issa joined. While they haven’t released an album since 2017’s Wizard Bloody Wizard, I listen to them every day.
How important are movies to Electric Wizard? Oborn told VICE, ““We love exploitation and sleaze movies in general. We dig Women-In-Prison films, Giallos, Rape/Revenge dramas, Erotic thrillers, Philippine exploitation etc… I’m also a big collector of 60s and 70s porn. Honestly—it was better, with professional performers. I’m actually working on a book dedicated to 60s/70s porn in Europe at the moment, but it’s been a very hard book to write. Many people involved in the industry are dead or on the run. Others who survived AIDS and the “witch hunts” are unwilling to talk about it any more. I have a few contacts but mostly performers, and they tend to be a little bit more crazed and unreliable. Unlike the U.S. porn stars of the 70s and 80s, the European and British industry is almost completely unknown. My favorite directors tend to be horror directors though: Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, Mario Bava, Jose Larraz, Robert Hartford-Davies, Andy Milligan, Paul Naschy. I guess I can always relate to the macabre, to the unusual. We actually have a script for a movie with Electric Wizard in it! It’s kinda like the Beatles movies… except ours is fuckin’ macabre and morbid. I can’t say much… you gotta keep these things ambiguous, but it’s more of a violent rape revenge sleaze exploitation film than a horror film.”
Here are just a few of the movies sampled and referenced in their music.
“Venus In Furs” on Black Masses: Obviously, this is a song all about not just the book, but the Jess Franco movie. “Queen of the night swathed in Saturn black, your ivory flesh upon my torture rack… to your leather boots I offer prayer, you rise like a Cobra, evil, dressed in furs.”
“Dunwich” on Witchcraft Today: “Your mother’s witches, burnt at the stake for sorcery. You were conceived upon the altar, rites obscene.” I can only imagine how many times the band has watched The Dunwitch Horror.
There’s also a sample from this movie in the song “We Hate You:”
“You see man as a rather dismal creature.”
“Yes. Why not? Look around, you’ll see what’s there. Fear and frightened people who kill what they can’t understand.”
“House of Whipcord” from Let Us Prey
I only wish the band was around when Pete Walker was making movies so that stuff like House of Whipcord could have their droning heavy riffs haunting every frame.
“The Living Dead at The Manchester Morgue” from We Live
“Living dead arise from the morgue at night. Silently we strike. Cower from the night, yeah.” Any band could write about a zombie movie. Electric Wizard go for the best, a movie with as many titles as it has incredible scenes. Oborn told Bloody Disgusting, “Probably one of my favourite films ever and a huge influence on the band. Even though it’s an Italian/Spanish co-production it captures the bleak loneliness of the English countryside perfectly. Even anti-hero Georges dodgy Cockney accent…haha.”
The band also used a sample from the film in the song “Wizard In Black”:
The Inspector : You’re all the same, the lot of you, with your long hair and faggot clothes. Drugs, sex, every sort of filth! And you hate the police. Don’t you?
George : You make it easy.
“The Hills Have Eyes” from Dopethrone
Obviously, Wes Craven’s film is basis for this instrumental.
Officer: Something must have forced him over. Did you get anything out of the witnesses?
Officer: Yes sir. Exactly the same story from all of them. Two motorcyclists jabbing at his tire with a knife.
Officer: Any identification?”
Officer: Yeah, the living dead again
The Sinful Dwarf
The band played this movie when they curated Roadburn 2013.
The Electric Grindhouse Cinema
They also played Mark of the Devil Part II (under the German title Hexen geschändet und zu Tode gequältwhich means Witches Raped and Tortured to Death), Janie, Erotic Witchcraft, Take An Easy Ride, Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave, Hunchback Of The Morgue and the Lasse Braun shorts Perversion-Violence, The Vikings Trilogy, Lady M, Hooked!, The Maniac and Psycho Doll.
“Son of Nothing” on Come, My Fanatics…
The sample that ends this song is from Beneath the Planet of the Apes: “In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe, lies a medium-sized star, and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now dead.”
The Satanism speech in “Vinum Sabbathi”
This comes from an episode of 20/20: “When you get into one of these groups, there’s only a couple of ways you can get out. One is death. The other is mental institutions.” The band also used another sample from the show: “Look if this happens to your kid, or if you look at this and you have children you say: Could this happen to my child out of some kind of rebellion? How would a parent be aware? Many youngsters are into it, teenagers and younger The clues are there, the satanic symbol 666. If you see that written on your child’s notebook, if they’re into heavy metal music, if they are associating with strange characters or drifting off to ceremonies and not explaining where they’re at, it’s well worth it for parents to look deeper and ask: What exactly are you up to? And with whom. Because this is serious. It could be harmless, it could just be a diversion. But it could also be deadly serious Absolutely” on “Mind Transferal” on the album Dopethrone.
“Wizard of Gore” on Supercoven
While this song references the Herschell Gordon Lewis movie, the sample comes from another moive that was inspired by that film Bloodsucking Freaks.
Sardu: “Good, good, good, good, good. What a marvelous, wonderful, attentive audience you are. And now may I add, a brave one, too. Now those of you who are weak-willed or cowards would have fled by now or regurgitated over the seats in front of you. Tonight we begin with torture. Again I warn you that if you find what you see is a little upsetting to your stomachs, then just pretend we’re playacting. But if you are skeptical or bored, then just pretend that what you see is real. Magic? Then let Mr. Silo explain our next trick… dismemberment.”
“Return Trip” on Come, My Fanatics…
“Get off my case, motherfucker” comes from Cannibal Ferox.
“I Am the Witchfinder” on Dopethrone
“I am Albino. You wish to see me?” is from Mark of the Devil.
L.S.D.
This song is on the soundtrack of Lucifers Satanic Daughter, along with the song “Black Mass.”
“Black Magic Rituals and Perversions” from Witchcult Today
“The Satanic Rites of Drugula” is obviously a play on Hammer’s The Satanic Rites of Dracula, while Thriller is referenced on the cover of Legalise Drugs and Murder, The Devil Rides Out‘s poster was used for Witchcult Today and “Night of the Shape” has a sound from — and is about — Halloween.
Movies mentioned in the book Come My Fanatics: A Journey into the World of Electric Wizard
Thanks to Letterboxd user Huurretursas, the following movies are mentioned in this book: Eye of the Devil, The Amityville Horror, Bad News Tour, Cannibal Ferox, A Clockwork Orange, The Defiance of Good, Hammer’s Dracula, Dracula A.D. 1972, Flash Gordon, Gummo, Hells Angels London, Hell’s Chosen Few, Last Days Here, The Last Temptation of Christ, Legend of the Witches, Lucifers Satanic Daughter, Mad Max 2, The Naked Vampire,The Northville Cemetery Massacre, The Outcasts, The Outsiders, Pink Flamingos, Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, The Power of the Witch, The Producers, The Sadist of Notre Dame, The Shout, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Tombs of the Blind Dead, A Town Called Hell, Wake In Fright, The Warriors, Zombie, Zero Hour: Massacre at Columbine High, Hooked, Robert Fripp: New York – Wimborne, To Kill a Mocking Alan, The Vikings, Delirium, Sex Express, The Rites of Uranus, Necromania, The Satanist, The Initiation of Sarahand Black Magic Rites.
There are so many more references that I am sure that I am missing. I am indebted to the band and the sources below that found so many that I didn’t know. If you know one, post in the comments and I’ll credit you.
As you know, I watch a lot of Tubi movies. And as I’ve been enjoying them, I started to realize that they just might be giallo. This article is my exploration into them and an attempt at creating a new subgenre. But first, for those not aware of the Italian giallo form, a short history.
What is giallo?
In Italian cinema, a filone is a term used by Mikel J. Koven in his book La Dolce Morte, as Italian movies form a large river and each genre is a small stream that flows off of it and then into several other smaller streams that come from it.
That means that while Italian exploitation film is itself a filone, so is giallo and so are the many films that are offshoots, such as f-giallo (female focused giallo, A Lizard In a Woman’s Skin), American giallo (Dressed to Kill), sex giallo (Strip Nude for Your Killer), post-1982* giallo (Obsession: A Taste for Fear) and even erotic thrillers (Night Eyes) and combinations of other filone.
It can be understood as a broader and more variable, flexible idea than genre
It can be understood as a tradition or formula of film narrative, rather than genre
Or in a double sense: it can be understood as a filone of a larger genre (like crime or horror), or simply as a filone with its own ‘strands’.
The giallo itself can be defined by so many criteria. Some believe that only Italian movies can be giallo. Or, according to The Giallo Files, “A giallo is a stylish European murder mystery.”
My own personal definition is that the classic giallo needs several elements:
A series of murders committed by a black gloved and masked killer; we might see those murders from the killer’s point of view
A psychosexual explanation for the reason for the murders, which may be seeing a murder at a young age, sexual issues, gender confusion, twins or money.
A hero or heroine that is either suspected of the crime or nearly murdered; this person is usually a foreigner in a strange land and has to investigate the crime on their own outside of the ineffective police.
Fashion. Italian 1970s giallo are known for high fashion, which also includes wild living spaces and parties that can only happen in films.
Sex. Lots and lots of sexual content without becoming outright filth.
Intangibles: The music, the talent involved, the title of the movie (animal titles get you closer to the genre) and bottles of J&B.
As you may already know, the secondary giallo filone can go completely away from these and become their own movies. It’s not a rigid thing but you can feel when something is giallo.
Giallo existed before Bird With the Crystal Plumage, but movies had been inspired by the Edgar Wallace aperback mystery novels published by Mondadori in yellow — or giallo — covers for a long time before that. After that film, however, giallo began to become more stylish and less in debt to American movies.
So how does the giallo get to America? Much less Tubi?
I’m not going to make the hypothesis that filmmakers like Chris Stokes have seen the films of Dario Argento, Sergio Martino or Umberto Lenzi.** However, they have seen the offshoots of giallo in the U.S., filone that took their own root: the slasher, the erotic thriller and the Lifetime movie.
The slasher: Whether you go back to Black Christmas, Peeping Tom, A Bay of Blood or even Psycho as the start of the genre, the slasher is the less fashion and sexually frustrated cousin of the giallo.
The erotic thriller: In my mind, there isn’t much difference between the erotic thriller and the giallo other than style. Then again, when you have directors like Adrian Lyne making them, you may get close to a giallo. However, many of these films are more about the sex than the murder set pieces and they miss the high fashion and tense camera work.
The Lifetime movie: Perhaps the closest American filone to the black giallo — we’re getting there. I mean the classic ones, not this new legitimacy that the channel has like No One Would Tell, Video Voyeur: The Sarah Wilson Story and Cyber Seduction: His Secret Life. These movies are either ripped from the headline or feature a murder plot that has a psychosexual reason. Therefore, bastardized giallo.
With Lifetime now making more celebrity movies, adaptions of books and made for cable movies with actual stars, where has the market for the movies that they made best gone? Tubi.
So what is an black giallo?
I always call out the films of Chris Stokes when it comes to Tubi Originals. So many of his films seem indebted to 80s slashers, direct to video films like The Stepfather and giallo. I Hate You to Death, Forever Us, Best Friend, The Assistant and several others are worth your time.
In You’re Not Alone, the hero has already lost his wife to a masked and gloved killer, but now he has to watch through security cameras — he’s on a flight — as the same killer comes after his daughter.
The Ex Obsession has Kim and John happily married while he gets a man crush on a co-worker named Grant. Kim and Grant used to date and start sleeping together and when John finds out, he kills his friend and ends up impersonating him.
Across three of The Stepmother films, Zooey is a woman who needs a family but keeps killing, moving from husband to husband, family to family.
Stokes isn’t the only director making these movies.
Directed by Jaira Thomas and written by Briana Cole, Played and Betrayed has a total giallo plot: a young couple goes on vacation to fix their marriage, meets another couple who inspires them to live a more racy life and then, the husband kills the wife. Except the body disappears.
The Marriage Pass is directed by Sam Coyle and written by Briana Cole. It has a husband missing being single and a wife allowing him to have an affair, but she has a plot that twists to get her revenge.
Booker T. Mattison’s Twisted Marriage Therapist is very close to a Lifetime film, as a marriage therapist puts couples through the wringer just to get her kicks.
Of all the Tubi Originals, Surprise may have gotten the most reaction when I posted it. David Gamble has everything he wants, like a gorgeous wife and a profitable company with his best friend. Yet when he thinks his wife and friend are sleeping together, he loses his mind and goes as over the edge as it gets.
Should you watch these?
That’s up to you. I have a lot of fun with them. Don’t expect an Argento movie but you will never be bored. Like the giallo, these films eschew formula, often with the villains killing everyone and getting away with it or the protagonist killing an entire family and being left to deal with the result. The twists are often so crazy that you may see them coming which I appreciate. Now, if they had more Italian disco soundtracks, I’d be fully endorsing them.
**Although they now can easily, as Tubi has an Italian horror and giallo topic subchannel that has some of the best movies of the genre, all free, all available to watch just as easily as you watch a basic Hollywood movie.
On a recent episode of The Cannon Canon, Geoff and Frank mentioned that the hired bad guys in Die Hard had been in so many of their favorite movies. As I was mentioned in regards to having the facts, now I have to live up to it and write this article. That said, this is the kind of thing I love. Who are those goons, who played them and where else have you seen them before? And have any of them been in a Cannon movie?
Hans Gruber (played by Alan Rickman)
Who is he: Hans Gruber is an East German criminal mastermind from who holds the Nakatomi Plaza hostage over the holidays in an attempt to steal $640 million in negotiable bearer bonds. He comes from a family of evil, as his brother Simon (Jeremy Irons) is the main villain of Die Hard with a Vengeance.
At some point in his life, he became part of the Volksfrei, a radical West German terrorist organization. Even this violent group wanted nothing to do with him, as he was kicked for his love of violence and that he was stealing not for the good of the group but for his own personal gain.
Alan Rickman said of the character, “As far as I’m concerned, I’m not playing the villain. I’m just playing somebody who wants certain things in life; has made certain choices, and goes after them.”
This is the same mindset the character was written to have. Steven de Souza, the film’s writer, wrote him as the protagonist. He wrote, “If he had not planned the robbery and put it together, Bruce Willis would have just gone to the party and reconciled or not with his wife. You should sometimes think about looking at your movie through the point of view of the villain who is really driving the narrative.”
According to Hans Buhringer, the German actor who portrayed Fritz, Rickman did an excellent German accent beyond just the basics. Rickman even got the dialect of German English down. When Hans tells Takagi that he enjoyed making models as a boy, he says: “I always enjoyed to make models when I was a boy.” That’s how a German person would speak English.
Where else have you seen Alan Rickman: After Die Hard, Rickman — who made his screen debut in the film — became a bad guy in many films, including the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and the potentially bad Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies. He also played Metatron in Dogma, Alexander Dane in Galaxy Quest and was the voice of Marvin in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, as well as hundreds of stage roles. He sadly died of cancer in 2016.
Karl Vreski (played by Alexander Godunov)
Who is he: Karl Vreski is an East German terrorist and the second-in-command for Hans Gruber. It’s thought that he also was part of the Volksfrei. He and his brother Tony cut the telephone lines — and one assumes the separate internet and alarm lines, which his out-of-control brother almost destroys — to take over Nakatomi Plaza.
He carries a Steyr AUG as his weapon of choice and for much of the movie is obsessed with killing John McClane to get revenge for the death of his brother. John believes that he’s killed him by hanging him with a chain, but Karl has a tremendous desire for revenge which allows him to escape. He nearly kills John and his wife Holly before Sgt. Al Powell is able to use his service weapon to shoot him between the eyes.
In Die Hard With a Vengeance, Simon Gruber also has a henchman named Karl. He is no relation and is played by Sven Toorvald.
Where else have you seen Alexander Godunov: The actor was a Russian ballet dancer who defected to the U.S. in 1979, which was dramatized in the movie Flight 222. Godunov joined American Ballet Theatre and danced as a principal dancer until 1982, when he had a falling out with childhood friend Mikhail Baryshnikov, the director of the company. He’s also in Witness and The Money Pit, but often turned down roles that had dancing or had him recreate his role as Karl. You can also see him as Scarabis in Waxwork II: Lost in Time and as an Amish dad in North (maybe he thought playing Amish again was funny and not typecasting). Sadly, he died at the age of 45, the victim of complications from hepatitis secondary to chronic alcoholism.
Theo (played by Clarence Gilyard Jr.)
Who is he: Theo says early on, “You didn’t bring me along for my charming personality.” That’s true. As you can tell, he uses the muscle of the other criminals — and then jump kicks a dead guard — to get to his job: locking down the building and then opening the security codes that it will take to get to the money that Hans Gruber wants.
He also does surveillance work for the crew, spotting the police vehicle that is blown up with a rocket launcher before yelling, “Oh my god and the quarterback is toast!”
He’s knocked out by Argyle, making him and Kristoff the only two henchmen not to die. He would attack McClane years later with his own gang in the 2020 commercial Die Hard Is Back.
Where else have you seen Clarence Gilyard Jr.: He was Radar Operator Sundown in Top Gun, as well as private investigator Conrad McMasters on Matlock and Texas Ranger Jimmy Trivette on Walker, Texas Ranger. He was also Reverend Bruce Barnes in the Left Behind movies, wrote ten books and was an associate professor in the College of Fine Arts – Department of Theatre at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Franco (played by Bruno Doyon)
Who is he: Franco works mostly with Fritz. They guard the hostages and later heads to the 30th floor where he sees Marco’s body on Sgt. Al Powell’s police car. He’s later killed by McClane machine gunning his knees and then he falls headfirst into a glass window. This scene was stunt-doubled by Steve Picerni.
Where else have you seen Bruno Doyon: His career was brief, as he appeared in the movie The Morning Man, the mini-series Crossing, an episode of a TV series called Le Parc Des Braves and appearing in the industrial movie Head Start: Meeting the Computer Challenge.
Tony Vreski (played by Andreas Wisniewski)
Who is he: After nearly fighting his brother as they cut the phone lines, Tony guards Nakatomi’s head executive Joe Takagi on the 34th floor as Hans asks for the code to the vault. He’s the first villain to be killed by John McClane, who breaks his neck as they fall down the steps. He then writes “Ho ho ho now I have a machine gun” on the killer’s chest. Some think it’s in blood, but I’ve seen other writing that says that it’s in red marker. His death drives his brother Karl to get revenge.
Tony is named for Anton “Little Tony the Red,” the main villain in Roderick Thorp’s novel Nothing Lasts Forever, the book that this movie is made from.
Where else have you seen Andreas Wisniewski: A year before this movie, Wisniewski played the killing machine Necros in The Living Daylights. A former dancer, he also appears in the videos for “Venus” by Bananarma and “Nikita” by Elton John, as well as Gothic, Death Machine and Mission: Impossible.
Alexander (played by Joey Plewa)
Who is he: After Marco’s body is thrown on Sgt. Al Powell’s police car, Alexander fires his M60E3 machine gun but misses the doughnut-loving officer. He is the one who fires the rocket launcher that destroys the police armored vehicle but is killed along with James when McClane throws C4 at them.
Where else have you seen Joey Plewa: After playing one of the Bad Boys in Bruce Willis’ vanity project The Return of Bruno — distributed by HBO/Cannon Home Video — Piewa was also in Roadhouse, three episodes of My Wife and Kids, the movie Bright Day! and despite getting blown up, he returned as Alexander in the Die Hard Is Back commercial. He’s also produced several music videos, including “Tease Me Please Me” by The Scorpions, “Blaze of Glory” by Jon Bon Jovi, “The More Things Change” for Cinderella and “Livin’ La Vida Loca” for Ricky Martin. He was also the voice — alongside Christopher Guest and Bill Murray — for the English version of the French cartoon B.C. Rock.
Marco (played by Lorenzo Caccialanza)
Who is he: Marco’s body is thrown from the 34th floor by John McClane. This brings Sgt. Al Powell into the action.
Where else have you seen Lorenzo Caccialanza: Caccialanza played soccer for several years in the Italian leagues before moving to the United States to pursue an acting career. In 1986, he played for the Hollywood Kickers when they won the Western Soccer Alliance championship.
He’s best known for being on Knot’s Landing, Days of Our Lives and The Bold and the Beautiful. He’s also in Funny About Love, Don Juan DeMarco, Entangled, Just Married and Monster-In-Law.
Kristoff (played by Gérard Bonn)
Who is he: He’s barely in the movie and his fate isn’t even told! He could still be up on the 34th floor for all we know!
Where else have you seen Gérard Bonn: He was in the French movie Vanille fraise, the TV series College, the TV movie Message from Nam and Killing Zoe.
Eddie (played by Dennis Hayden)
Who is he: How is Eddie the next to last bad guy to die? Well, he was originally written to die halfway through the film. Hayden hired the future sister-of-law of writer Steven E. de Souza as his publicist and used that to get Eddie to be killed next-to-last. He’s also not Huey Lewis, even though the singer voiced Eddie in The Cleveland Show episode “Die Semi-Hard.”
Where else have you seen Dennis Hayden: Hayden appears in a Cannon movie! He’s Sonny in Murphy’s Law. He’s also in Action Jackson, Beyond Desire, Another 48 Hrs., Wishmasterand Andrew Divoff’s Night of the Living Dead 3D: Re-Animation.
Uli (played by Al Leong)
Who is he: Despite only saying two lines — “Move it! Come on!” and “Got it!” — Uli is memorable because of his love for candy, eating both Nestle Crunch and Mars candy bars and the fact that he’s played by Al Leong,
Where else have you seen Al Leong: Everywhere. Leong is the king of movie henchmen and his resume is filled with movies where he’s backed up bad guys. An expert at Northern Shaolin Kung Fu, Tae Kwon Do, Kali and Jujutsu, Leong shows up in My Science Project, Big Trouble In Little China (he was also in John Cassavetes’ Big Trouble the same year), Running Scared, Lethal Weapon, Steele Justice, Action Jackson, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, They Live, Black Rain, Cage (a movie with Reb Brown and Lou Ferrigno and I haven’t seen it?), Savage Beach, I Come In Peace, Aftershock, Death Warrant, The Perfect Weapon, Showdown in Little Tokyo, Rapid Fire, Hard Hunted, Last Action Hero, Hot Shots! Part Deux, Beverly Hills Cop III, The Shadow, Double Dragon, Lethal Weapon Part IV, Escape from L.A., The Replacement Killers, Godzilla, Forbidden Warrior, The Scorpion King and that’s before you get into TV work and appearance in the video “Poppin’ Them Thangs” by G-Unit.
Heinrich (played by Gary Roberts)
Who is he: After setting up missiles on the 35th floor, Heinrich sets up the C4 on the roof. He’s killed by John McClane just before Marco is also killed.
Where else have you seen Gary Roberts: He is in two episodes of Falcon Crest, Beach Fever, “The Face” episode of Monsters, as a cop in Point Break and in the films Letters from a Killer, Direct Hit and Alien Intruder.
Fritz (played by Hans Buhringer)
Who is he: Fritz handles the hard work, like telling Karl that his brother is dead and being the one to tell Hans that there’s an intruder. After all that, when he yells, “They’re using artillery on us!” Hans calls him an idiot in front of everyone.
Hans Buhringer wasn’t available the day of his death scene so he’s played by Henry Kingi, who has a wig on.
Where else have you seen Hans Buhringer: This is his only movie. He did direct and wrote a movie, Contract Online, in 2008.
James (played by Wilhelm von Homburg)
Who is he: James is the ponytailed killing machine who is killed along with Alexander when John McClane throws C4 at them.
Where else have you seen Wilhelm von Homburg: A German boxer, wrestler and weight lifter — as well as a baker and policeman who worked at the Buchenwald concentration camp but claimed that he was never a Nazi — Homburg is also in The Last of the Secret Agents?, The Wrecking Crew, The Devil’s Brigade and In the Mouth of Madness. He’s best known for playing Prince Vigo von Homburg Deutschendorf in Ghostbusters II, a role he didn’t know he was going to be dubbed for, only finding out at the premiere.
Homburg’s real life is — charitably — bonkers. He lived a life chasing after excess, retiring from boxing to live in St. Pauli Kiez, a red-light district of Hamburg living a life of crime before coming to America and being part of the Venice Beach weightlifting scene. His life after being in the film Diggstown was one of sadness, as he spent the last years of his life homeless, either sleeping in his van, the YMCA or in friends’ homes until he died of prostate cancer.
Maybe that was his punishment, as this Deadspin account of his life is pretty astounding, telling the story of a man loved the idea that he may have fathered his half-sister.
Well, yippee-ki-yay, Mister Falcon! We did it! Did I miss anything?
I’m obsessed with the packages that were sold to UHF channels in the 1960s. Through these collections of movies, which are almost the Mill Creek fifty packs of their time, these small stations got a ton of films that they could show at any time, however they wanted.
For an example of another syndicated package, check out this article on the Nightmare Theater package.
Embassy Pictures, who created Sons of Hercules, was founded in 1942 by Joseph E. Levine as a distributor of foreign films. He introduced America to Sophia Loren and Godzilla, while bringing foreign movies like Jack the Ripper and Attila: Scourge of God to the U.S., renaming The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World to Licensed to Kill and producing and executive producing everything from Santa Claus Conquers the Martiansand The Graduate to Mad Monster Party, They Call Me Trinity, Magic, The Carpetbaggers and The Producers.
He also spent more than million dollars — more money than 1956’s Hercules cost to make — on the publicity it took to turn Steve Reeves into a star. He also introduced the concept of saturation booking by using over 600 prints of that movie, which at the time was a huge number of prints to be struck, as most theaters only had one screen. He also invested $120,000 on dubbing, sound effects and new titles, but the sword and sandal epic became one of the highest-grossing films of the year and, as you can expect in Italy, creating a whole new genre that would see hundreds of these movies made between 1958 to 1965. They would only fade when replaced by the Italian Western and the Eurospy movie.
Based on the success of the Kirk Douglas movie Ulysses — the idea of The Odyssey also inspired plenty of Italian Westerns where the gunfighter finally makes his way home and finds a different town than he remembered — these movies made stars of Reeves, Reg Park and Gordon Scott. Because so many of them demanded larger-than-life superheroic-looking men, many of them were bodybuilders. And so many of them were part of Mae West’s “Muscleman Review,” including Gordon Mitchell, Mickey Hargitay, Reg Lewis, Mark Forest and Dan Vadis.
Embassy knew that these movies had been popular in theaters and that while that initial success may be waning, local UHF channels had a desperate need for content. They answered with Sons of Hercules, which gave these stations fourteen movies unified with a memorable name, a catchy theme song and a voiceover that starts each movie placing them into the same cinematic universe, even if there was no such connection.
They also edited the films so that stations could air them as one-hour episodes, giving the stations 28 weeks of programming that could be repeated as a full year of a one-hour block. Because none of these movies ever played theaters in the U.S., there was some cachet when they were offered to syndicators.
Thanks to Board Game Geek, I learned that Levine left no stone unturned with these movies. He was an early believer in merchandising movies and Sons of Hercules even had a Milton Bradley board game.
The movies in the package are:
Ursus, Son of Hercules: This is Ursus, a 1961 movie directed by Carlo Campogalliani that stars Ed Fury, who would go on to play the hero in two other movies, Ursus in the Valley of the Lions and Ursus in the Land of Fire. He’s also in The Wild Women of Wongo. This movie has some intrigue for fans of Jess Franco, as the role of the virginal Fillide is played by Soledad Miranda.
Mole Men vs the Son of Hercules: This is really Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World, directed by Antonio Leonviola and starring Mark Forest as Maciste. He battles a subterranean race of albino mole men and a monstrous ape. Gianni Garko also shows up.
Triumph of the Son of Hercules: This Tanio Boccia-directed movie is actually The Triumph of Maciste and stars Kirk Morris, Mr. Italia 1961, and a man born as Adriano Bellini.
Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules: Also known as Maciste vs. the Monsters, this stars Reg Lewis as Maciste. He’s called Maxus in the U.S. dub and every time his name gets spoken, it’s a totally different voice saying it. This Guido Malatesta-directed movie was a co-production between Italy’s Euro International Film and Yugoslavia’s Caserbib filmed at Incir De Paolis Studios in Rome and on location in the caves of Ljubljana in Slovenia. In the UK, it was called Colossus of the Stone Age and re-released and retitled at late year of 1975 as Land of the Monsters when it played double features with Revenge of the Gladiators.
Venus Against the Son of Hercules: Mars, God Of War was Marcello Baldi and has Roger Browne as Mars, the god of war, who falls in love with Daphne (Jackie Lane, who left acting and married Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe-Langenburg). She’s menaced by a carnivorous plant which makes this pretty fun.
Ulysses Against the Son of Hercules: Ulysses against Hercules has Hercules (Mike Lane, former wrestler Tarzan Mike and Frank N. Stein on the TV show Monster Squad) and Ulysses (Georges Marchal) fighting and then teaming up against bird people. It’s directed by Mario Caiano (Nightmare Castle).
Medusa Against the Son of Hercules: Made 19 years before Clash of the Titans, this has Richard Harrison as Perseus in a battle against Medusa. Known in Italy as Perseus The Invincible, it was directed by Alberto de Martino (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room).
Son of Hercules in the Land of Fire: The sequel to Ursus, Ursus In The Land Of Fire as stars Ed Fur and was directed by Giorgio Simonelli (Two Mafiosi Against Goldginger).
Tyrant of Lydia Against The Son of Hercules: Goliath and the Rebel Slave is also directed by Mario Caiano and stars Gordon Scott as Goliath and Ombretta Colli, the future President of Milan, as Princess Cori.
Messalina Against the Son of Hercules: The Last Gladiator has Richard Harrison as Glaucus, a gladiator in the time of Messalina (Lisa Gastoni), Claudius (Philippe Hersent) and Caligula (Charles Borromel). It was directed by Umberto Lenzi.
The Beast of Babylon Against the Son of Hercules: Also known as Hero of Babylon and Goliath, King of the Slaves, this movie has Gordon Scott as Nippur and is about the Fall of Babylon. It was directed by Siro Marcellini, who made the Lola Falana-starring Italian Western Lola Colt.
Terror of Rome Against the Son of Hercules: Maciste, Gladiator of Sparta starred Mark Forest as Maciste, a Spartan gladiator who falls in love with a Christian woman (Marilu Tolo, Roy Colt and Winchester Jack) — where are you Peter Steele? — and must battle monsters and men in the Colosseum. Directed by Mario Caiano, who seemingly specialized in these films.
Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness: Hercules the Invincible stars Dan Vadis and is one of two movies directed by cinematographer Alvaro Mancori. It’s an actual Hercules movie, a rarity in the Sons of Hercules package!
Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules: A movie of many names, this is also Anthar the Invincible, The Slave Merchants and Soraya, Queen of the Desert. It also stars Kirk Morris — that first name has to be inspired by Kirk Douglas, right? — who plays Anthar. He battles the devilish Ganor (Mario Feliciani) and it has a final battle in a hall of mirrors, which one assumes is taken from Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai. I see you hiding there, director Anthony Dawson, or should I say Antonio Margheriti.
Did you see Sons of Hercules on TV when you were growing up? What was it like? Is there anything I’m missing? I absolutely love that some of these have a trailer that introduces you to all of the sons that you will meet throughout the films with a fast-talking sixties style and song that feels like Batmania being focused on myth.
In the spirit of the deep dives I did on Demons and La Casa, I was excited to discover just how many movies use the title Zombi. As I was learning which ones were which, I figured that it’d be a good idea to share my scholarly research.
Dawn of the Dead(1978): Obviously, Zombi is Dawn of the Dead. It was released under that title in Italy, as well as featuring an international cut by producer Dario Argento which is nine minutes shorter. Debuting nine months before the film played its native country, Zombi: L’alba dei Morti Viventi (Zombies: Dawn of the Dead) has more music by Goblin, less exposition and a faster pace as well as dialogue and gore that never appeared in any version of Romero’s cuts.
Speaking of that Goblin score — The Goblins — three of their songs are in the U.S. version and much of the soundtrack would show up in Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Dead(as well as Tsui Hark’s Dangerous Encounters of the First Kind; Hark was a zombie fan one assumes, as he made another film around this time called We’re Going to Eat You).
It’s intriguing to me that in America, Dawn is the next part of the story. For Italy, it was the first part in their consciousness. While in the West it would be followed by four official sequels and a remake, the unofficial world of Italian exploitation would soon take over and create an entirely new monster from the shambling corpse that originated in Western Pennsylvania.
Zombi 2(1979): When Enzo G. Castellari stepped away from making an Italian sequel to Zombi — the rules are quite hazy in regard to intellectual property rights for installments to movies there — Lucio Fulci was hired. And while his film would sail away from the scientific explanation of zombies in Romero’s work — to be fair, Dawn is packed with multiple explanations — and goes to voodoo for its origins, it takes the ultraviolence that Tom Savini created in Monroeville and amps it up for the island of Matul.
Writer Dardano Sacchetti wrote this movie as Nightmare Island and has said this his influences included The Island of Doctor Moreau and classic zombie tales like I Walked with a Zombie, The Walking Dead and Voodoo Island.
I don’t need to sell you on the magic of this movie. Romero told Paul Weedon, when asked, “So I didn’t pay attention to it and I didn’t go to see them. I’ve seen them since, of course, and I think they’re sort of fun. But I had no particular care or concern about it at all.
I’ve always been sort of off in my corner doing my thing. And I’ve just hit the point where I can’t do that anymore, you know? I can’t hide and just bring the zombies out. I used to be the only guy working with zombies, except for those guys, like Fulci. And that died quickly.”
Zombi 3(1988): Directed by Fulci and/or Bruno Mattei, written by Claudio Fragasso and Rossella Drudi, and all sorts of strange, Zombi 3 was shot in the Philippines. That’s where either Fulci got sick before it was finished or fought with producers. Either way, Mattei finished Strike Commando 2, went home to spend the holidays with his family and came back to finish the movie with Fragasso.
In the magazine X-Rated, Mattei was diplomatic and even complimentary of Fulci, saying “…the film’s soul is from Fulci. It was his object, not mine. I only took it over after the main production was finally finished. Fulci was informed about everything and there was little discussion about it.”
While charitably a mess, the film does have a great flying zombie head attack and I love that it lifts the DJ narrating the film from The Warriors.
This is not the only movie listed as Zombi 3. Others include Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City which was released as Zombi 3: Efialtis stin poli (Zombies 3: Nightmare In the City) in Greece; Andrea Bianchi’s Burial Ground, which was released as Zombie 3 in Japan, Zombi Horror on Italian video and Zombie 3 – Die Rückkehr der Zombies (Zombie 3: Return of the Zombies) in Germany; Marino Girolami’s Zombie Holocaust (remixed in the U.S. as Doctor Butcher, M.D.) was released as Zombie 3, José Luis Merino’s The Hanging Woman (AKA Orgy of the Dead, Beyond the Living Dead, Return of the Zombies and Bracula: Terror of the Living Dead) was sold as Zombie 3 ‘nd Jorge Grau’s Let Sleeping Corpses Lie (AKA The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue, Don’t Open the Window, Don’t Speak Ill of the Living Dead and Breakfast at the Manchester Morgue) was released in Greece as Zombi: Epidromi apo to nekrotafeio (Zombies: Graveyard Raid) and in Brazil and Italy as Zombi 3, despite being made four years before Dawn.
Zombie 4: After Death (1989): Claudio Fragasso, who directed this, refers to it as the “last gasp” of Italian zombie movies. The movie starts as researchers discover that the natives are practicing voodoo, so they kill the priest, who places a curse that brings the dead back to life before he dies. Only a young girl named Jenny survives thanks to an enchanted necklace her parents gave her.
Jess Franco’ and Jean Rollin’s A Virgin Among the Living Dead may have been made in 1974, but it was released on video in the U.S. as Zombie 4: A Virgin Among the Living Dead.
In Greece and Australia, Panic(AKA Bakterion) was released as Zombi 4 and Bruno Mattei’s Hell of the Living Deadwas also released as the fourth movie in this series.
Zombi 5: Killing Birds(1987): Whether this was directed by Joe D’Amato, Claudio Lattanzi or Claudio Fragasso, this movie has zombies killing people, birds eating eyeballs and the same house from The Beyond. It somehow also has Robert Vaughn in the cast. I still can’t figure out how they got him.
Jess Franco’s Revenge In the House of Usher was also released as Zombie 5: Revenge in the House of Usher (that title is on the video box only, not the actual movie); Hell of the Living Dead(which was released as Zombi 4 as well) was retitled Zombi 5: Ultimate Nightmare in America. Seeing as how it rips off Dawn‘s soundtrack, that actually makes sense.
Zombi 5 in Australia is really León Klimovsky’s Revolt of the Zombies (which was re-released in 1980 by Independent Artists as Walk of the Dead complete with red flashes during the gore; it was picked as a Dog of the Week by Siskel and Ebert; it also has the title Invocation of the Devil so that it could be mistaken as an Exorcist movie).
Zombi 6, anyone?: In Australia, Zombi 6 is a movie that desperately wishes that it were Zombi, Dawn of the Mummy. It even has the same markup artist as Fulci’s movie, Maurizio Trani. The Down Under version of Zombi VII: Last Rites is from another entirely different film series., It’s the fourth Blind Dead movie, Night of the Seagulls. Finally, Zombi VIII: Urban Decayis an Australian-made movie.
Jess Franco’s Oasis of the ZombiesAKA The Abyss of the Living Dead is also Zombi 6.
Strangely enough, Absurd might be a sequel to Antropophagus, but it was sold on video as Zombie 6: Monster Hunter. That’s OK. Antropophagus came out as Zombie 7.
Even more Zombi: The North Korean kaiju film Pulgasari is a big story in and out of itself — director Shin Sang-ok was kidnapped and taken to North Korea by Kim Jong-il to make the movie — but for our purposes, it was called Zombi 34: The Communist Bull-Monster in Pakistan.
Born in Lodi, New Jersey, The Misfits are a horror punk band that were originally around from only 1977 to 1982 — in their original incarnation — before years of legal battles and new lineups finally gave way to a series of reunions that began in 2016.
This article will, for the most part, concentrate of the music that came out of the classic 77-82 era and the lineup of vocalist, songwriter and occasional keyboardist Glenn Danzig; bassist Jerry Only; guitarist Doyle (well, Franché Coma and Bobby Steele were also around for a good chunk of this time) and a rotating cast of drummers that rivals Spinal Tap for frequency of members quitting, if not outright dying through misadventure.
Even the name of the band is a movie reference, as the last movie that a doomed Marilyn Monroe would make — Monroe and the end of the 60s Camelot are referred to in songs like “Who Killed Marilyn?” and “Bullet” — The Misfits, which is also the last film of Clark Gable.
Not all songs by the band are references to films — “She” has lyrics referring to Patty Hearst that shout “She walked out with empty arms, machine gun in her hand/She is good and she is bad, no one understands/She walked in silence, never spoke a word/She’s got a rich daddy, she’s her daddy’s girl” — but by and large, no band ever referred to more movies, much less genre movies, than The Misfits.
The Misfits mainly released singles for the start of their career, only releasing full albums late in their career before the original lineup split up in October 1983. As such, this list is in order of the singles and then EPs and albums. Feel free to correct any errors that show up.
Seeing as how we already covered “Cough/Cool” backed with “She,” let’s get into the “Bullet” 7-inch.
Bullet (1978): The first release from Glenn’s label Plan 9, which yes, is a reference to Ed Wood’s Plan 9 from Outer Space, “Bullet” may be my current favorite Misfits song, but that changes nearly every day.
Plan 9 was a needed name change, as their label was originally called Blank Records. Months after the release of “Cough/Cool,” Mercury Records issued a Pere Ubu record on their own Blank Records label. unaware that a legally smart beyond his years Danzig held the trademark. They offered him thirty hours of studio time in exchange for the rights to the name, which he accepted and used the time to work toward tracks for the proposed Static Age album, which would not come out in its entirety until 1996.
“We Are 138” is another song that no one in the band can agree with Danzig on. Only and Steele mention that Danzig used to draw these androids with 138 on their foreheads and included these pictures in fan club materials. If anyone asked what it meant, it was supposed to be some secret that meant nothing. Or it was a reference to the movie THX-1138. As for Glenn, he said, “They didn’t write it and they don’t know what the fuck it’s about. It’s about violence.”
“Attitude” is straight-up rock and roll, getting covered years later by Guns ‘N Roses, while “Hollywood Babylon” is way too close to Kenneth Anger’s book title of the same name.
Horror Business (1979): “Horror Business”, “Teenagers from Mars” and “Children in Heat” appear on this 7-inch (well, 25 early copies have “Horror Business” on both sides) and there are plenty of movie references within. It’s also the first appearance of the band’s mascot, which was taken from the 1946 movie serial The Crimson Ghost. The back cover also has the band’s images along with Lon Chaney from The Phantom of the Opera.
“Horror Business” might be about Sid Vicious killing former girlfriend Nancy Spungen. On the evening of February 1, 1979, a small group of Vicious’s friends — including Jerry Only — celebrated him making bail. At the party, a detoxed Vicious was given heroin and overdosed that night and found by his mother the next morning. Only helped Beverley collect Vicious’s belongings and invited her to attend a Misfits recording session — at one point the band was to back him up on a solo record and one wonders how Glenn would have dealt with that — and one of the songs they recorded while they were there was this one, a song which has the lyrics “You don’t go in the bathroom with me” — Spungen was killed in a bathroom — and “I’ll stick a knife right in you.” That said, Glenn shouting “PSYCHO ’78!” might just be his way of saying that this is a song about Psycho and not anything in the news.
There are also tons of strange sounds and voices all over this track. Instead of paying to re-record it, the band claimed it was recorded in a haunted house. The Misfits had all sorts of urban legends written about them, such as how Ian MacKaye once said that he heard that the entire band were crippled and scarred maniacs who could only be released once a year to perform and always on Halloween (this makes some sense, as Bobby Steele had a minor case of spina bifida as a child, which forced him to wear a steel leg brace and walk with a cane).
“Teenagers from Mars” is obviously named after the 1959 science fiction movie Teenagers from Outer Space. “Children In Heat” isn’t about any movie, which is surprising.
Night of the Living Dead (1979): Obviously, The Misfits loved George Romero’s film and even used the logo from the movie. Glenn also includes a reference to his reading material in the lyrics “You think you’re a zombie, you think it’s a scene/from some monster magazine.”
“Where Eagles Dare” takes its name from the 1968 war movie and “Rat Fink” is the only cover the original Misfits lineup recorded. It’s originally an Allan Sherman song and yet is still credited to Danzig, who recorded “The Hunter” on Danzig 1 and took a writing credit, even though it was written by Steve Cropper, Donald “Duck” Dunn, Al Jackson Jr., Booker T. Jones and Carl Wells and originally performed by Albert King.
Beware (1980): First released in January 1980, this EP combined the Misfits’ previously released singles “Bullet” and “Horror Business” and was meant to be brought by the band to the UK for their abortive tour with The Damned. It also has the first release of “Last Caress,” a song whose lyrics are so rough that Only wouldn’t even perform it live after Danzig left.
3 Hits from Hell (1981): While “London Dungeon” is about Glenn and Bobby getting jailed after a fight with skinheads on The Damned tour, while “Horror Hotel” is the Americanized name of City of the Dead. Many claim that “Ghoul’s Night Out” is a reference to Ed Wood’s Night of the Ghouls, that movie was not released until 1984. Maybe Glenn was referring to reports of the film being made, but more likely people just saw an Ed Wood movie had a title close to this song and just assumed that it was based on that movie.
Halloween (1981): The first Misfits release to take the font from Famous Monsters of Filmland, “Halloween” has two versions of the song, “Halloween” and “Halloween II.” This has nothing to do with the John Carpenter movies, but instead Glenn’s memories of the holiday — “This day anything goes / Burning bodies hanging from poles / I remember Halloween” — while the other version is in Latin and says, “Ancient formulas of exorcisms and excommunications / that witches and those made wolves believe / I maim now the demon clothed in wolfskin / Having to hide in the hollow of a tree / I believe that they so can be changed.” Danzig’s next band, Samhain, would cover this song, if you can cover yourself.
Walk Among Us (1982): The first Misfits release I bought — on cassettete — Walk Among Us is the record that changed my life. How can someone turn wearing a Captain Harlock shirt and using the art from The Angry Red Planet and Earth vs. the Flying Saucers into a career? Well, The Misfits were doing it.
It was the first full-length album to be released by the band, even if it was the third to be recorded after Static Age and 12 Hits from Hell. Recorded between June 1981 and January 1982 in studio — other than “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” which was a live track.
“I Turned into a Martian” seems to reference the theme of so many movies of the 50s, like I Married a Martian or the Ray Bradbury story “Dark They Were And Golden Eyed.”
“All Hell Breaks Loose” references one of my favorite Hammer movies, Twins of Evil, and has one of the best Misfits lyrics: “I send my murdergram / To all these monster kids / It comes right back to me and it’s / Signed in there parents’ blood.”
“Vampira” is all about Maila Nurmi, the KABC-TV horror hostess who also appears in Plan 9 From Outer Space. “Hey! Black dress moves in a blue movie / Graverobbers from outer space / Well, your pulmonary trembles in your outstretched arm / Tremble so wicked! Two-inch nails! Micro waist! With a pale white feline face / Inclination eyebrows to there.” pretty much tells you that this is all about the horror icon.
How happy do you think Glenn was in these photos?
The Damned also released “Plan 9, Channel 7” and Vampira herself released two seven-inches with the band Satan’s Cheerleaders, “I Am Damned” and “Genocide Utopia.”
“Astro Zombies” is based on the Tura Satana and John Carradine-starring film, and has equally evocative words in it: “With just a touch of my burning hand / I’m gonna live my life to destroy your world / Prime directive, exterminate / The whole fuckin’ race.”
“Violent World” either comes from a magazine that used to show death scene photos, but “Skulls” comes right from Glenn’s brain, a singalong song about murder and loving every minute of it.
Glenn may have taken “Braineaters” from The Brain Eater, as the idea that zombies eat brains did not arrive until Return of the Living Dead in 1985. It is the only music video the band ever did and was given to their friends.
Evilive (1982): In just 13 minutes, the band tears through “20 Eyes,” “Night of the Living Dead,” “Astro Zombies,” “Horror Business” and “London Dungeon” from a December 17, 1981 show at The Ritz in New York City and “All Hell Breaks Loose” and “We Are 138” from a November 20, 1981 performance at On Broadway in San Francisco.
In case you wondered, the album art is based on the poster for the 1957 movie The Undead.
Earth A.D./Wolfs Blood (1983): By 1983, Danzig was aleady planning his next band, the slowed down goth darkness that is Samhain, with the songs “Bloodfeast” (which could reference either the 1963 Herschell Gordown Lewis Blood Feast or the alternate title for Silent Night Bloody Night) and “Death Comes Ripping” meant for that band.
What emerges is less of the singalong sound of the band and more of a move to a hardcore sound. “Earth A.D.” slams out of the start of the album — is the reference to every horror movie adding an AD in the late 60s and early 70s, like Dracula A.D. 1972 and Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. — and even has the lyric “you bet you’re life because the hills have eyes.”
“Queen Wasp” could have come from the movie Queen Wasp or The Wasp Woman, while “Devilock” is a reference to the band’s haircuts. “Green Hell” is a reference to either The Monster from Green Hell or the film Green Hell. That song and “Last Caress” were the gateway for a lot of new fans, as Metallica covered them on their The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited. The Misfits got tons of new fans from the band, as they often wore their shirts on stage.
“Wolfs Blood,” “Demonomania” and “Hellhound” may be horror in theme, but don’t reference any movies.
Die! Die! My Darling! (1984): Released seven months after the band broke up, this single contains the song “ie! Die! My Darling!,” which takes its title from the Hammer movie Fanatic, which took on that title when released in the U.S. The front cover is a complete ripoff of Chamber of Chills #19 — ask Glenn where he got the Danzig skull someday — and it has a great Pushead back cover. There’s also the lyric, “Your future’s in an oblong box,” which one assumes refers to The Oblong Box.
“We Bite” is a straight-up angry horror punk song, while “Mommy, Can I Go Out and Kill Tonight?” is a direct reference to the poster for the 1966 Amicus movie The Psychopath.
Legacy of Brutality (1985): This compilation album contains overdubbed mixes of previously unreleased songs, mainly from the January–February 1978 Static Age sessions.
“Static Age” doesn’t have any references, but “TV Casualty” is filled with references to 70s syndicated TV, including “i wish they’d put prince namor on the tube” (the 1966 Sub-Mariner animated show) and samples of NYC Channel 11 playing Star Trek and Channel 5’s repeat of I Love Lucy.
“Hybrid Moments” may be amongst the band’s finest songs, yet I can’t find any references, nor in “Spinal Remains,” “Come Back,” “Some Kinda Hate,”” Theme for a Jackal,” “Angelfuck” or “American Nightmare,” as by the time Glenn fully embraced Samhain, there was no more time for singing about 50s monster kid movies.
Then — yearrs of litigation over who owned the band’s name, Danzig playing in Samhain and his own self-named band, Doyle and Jerry — taking on the name Mocavious Kryst — playing in a band called Kryst the Conquerer with Yngwie Malmsteen singer Jeff Scott Soto and attempting to release music that was the opposite of the “Satanic, evil and possibly damaging to impressionable youths” songs of Samhain and Danzig. Once Jerry and Doyle reached an out of court settlement with Glenn, they became The Misfits and redid these songs.
The revised Misfits line-up of Jerry, Doyle, Dr. Chud and Michale Graves went the opposite direction of Glenn’s Lucifugian left hand path and released this album, which references American Psycho, The Abominable Dr. Phibes, This Island Earth, The Crimson Ghost, Day of the Dead, The Haunting, Mars Attacks, Poltergeist, the Outer Limits episode “Don’t Open Till Doomsday” and Hell Night, while a music video for “Dig Up Her Bones” that had clips from Bride of Frankenstein, which the band wrote about in “Hate the Living, Love the Dead.”
The difference with the new line-up was that while classic Misfits songs had references, these songs were outright completely based on movies. trying to follow the success of what Glenn once wrote about. Then again, he never had the budget to get Famous Monsters cover artist Basil Gogos to paint the album cover.
I Wanna Be a New York Ranger (1998): A hidden fact about the original band is that while Glenn is a short — and later muscular — comic book fan, Jerry and Doyle were football stars in their high school who loved Van Halen. As such, there’s no way that Danzig would have approved of their sports song “I Wanna Be a NY Ranger,” which they released as a single written by John Cafiero, who directed the music videos for “American Psycho” and “Dig Up Her Bones.” It’s basically the song “Airborne Ranger” and was intended for The Ramones, who broke up before they would perform it. Graves is not on the single version; that’s Cafiero singing. This song is also 1:38 long, which I’m still laughing about.
Famous Monsters (1999): The last album with this line-up, Famous Monsters keeps going for the easy reference game by directly calling out the Forrest Ackerman magazine. Songs include “Kong at the Gates” and “Kong Unleashed,” (King Kong and the entrance music for WCW wrestler Vampiro, who The Misfits used to come to the ring with; the band even wrestled a few matches) “The Forbidden Zone,” (Planet of the Apes) “Lost in Space,” (you tell me, right?) “Crawling Eye,” (based on The Trollenberg Terror) “Pumpkin Head,” (were they even trying?), “Die Monster Die” (Die Monster Die), “Them,” (Them!), “Helena” and “Helena 2,” (Boxing Helena) and “Devil Doll” (Devil Doll).
The song “Scream” was written in a parking lot in Seattle while the Misfits were on tour, as the band had learned that director Wes Craven was interested in using Misfits songs for his film Wishmaster. Instead, they wrote this for Scream 2 and it was not used. It does have a music video directed by George Romero, though! Romero was in Toronto filming Bruiser and needed a band to perform during the film’s final murder scene. The Misfits agreed to perform in the film and to record two songs for the soundtrack — “Fiend Without a Face” and “Bruiser” — if Romero directed their video. In the liner notes for Cuts from the Crypt, Only states, “It was an even trade, we shook hands and the deal was done. Business complications soon followed and I became very unhappy with my record label and my publishing company.” Of the stuff that the late Misfits line-up did, this video is probably the most fun, as it has them as zombies in a video directed by, you know, the king of zombie movies.
There’s also the Psycho in the Wax Museum EP, an Evilive 2 album with this line-up that has Graves performing some Danzig-era songs, and Cuts from the Crypt, which has different versions and unreleased songs like the aforementioned soundtrack songs from Bruiser.
Following Project 1950, the first Misfits album with Jerry singing, there would be another Misfits line-up, this time featuring Dez Cadena and Eric “Chupacabra” Arce.
Devil’s Rain! (2013): In 2009, The Misfits released a song called “Land of the Dead” which had the line-up of Jerry, Dez and former Misfits drummer Robo. The two songs from that release — which also has cover art by Marvel Zombies artist Arthur Suydam — were “Land of the Dead” and “Twilight of the Dead” and yes, they both reference Romero’s Land of the Dead.
Those songs also appear on this album with songs that namecheck The Devil’s Rain!, The Black Hole, The Mummy’s Hand, Ghost of Frankenstein and Dark Shadows, while “Vivid Red” is inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Only’s son, Jerry Caiafa II — also billed as Jerry Other — is also on the album.
Where The Misfits were once a band that scared the hell out of people, now they were happy goofballs out to put on a show. I mean, could you see Glenn singing “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,” “Monster Mash” or “The Cockroach That Ate Cincinnati?”
All is well that ends well, though, as there’s now a classic Misfits line-up of Danzig, Only, Doyle, the best drummer ever Dave Lombardo and guitarist Acey Slade that are playing live shows, but never seemingly recording anything new.
In 2016, Doyle told Rolling Stone, “Eventually Doyle’s got to write a new album; I’ve got to write a new album; Glenn’s got to write a new album. Why don’t we work together and make the greatest album ever? Now we’ve got different elements. We’ve got Doyle playing more of a metal kind of thing. We’ve got Dave, who we’re trying to figure out what the fuck he’s doing. And Glenn’s got his own thing. And Acey (Slade, second guitar) fills in good, too. And I’ve got the band where it is today. So it’s a matter of re-molding and using all the different elements that I’ve got.”
The band has also appeared in the following movies: Animal Room, Big Money Hustlas, Campfire Stories and Bruiser, while Glenn appeared in The Prophecy II and directed Death Rider and Verotika.
Thanks for reading through this. Obviously, I love The Misfits and their appreciation for movies made me seek out stuff I may have never seen. Are there any references I missed?
I forgot that there was a track “Mephisto Waltz” on Collection 2. It’s based on the movie The Mephisto Waltz and may have Samhain/Danzig bassist Eerie Von playing on it.
And oh yeah…
Static Age (recorded 1978, released in 1996): This has Return of the Fly, which is basically Glenn saying the credits of the movie. Really. “Return of the Fly, Return of the Fly/With Vincent Price/Helen Delambre, Helen Delambre/François, François/Cecile, Cecile.” This album was on The Misfits Box Set but a lot of it was also in Legacy of Brutality.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally ran in Drive-In Asylum #23. Buy it now.
One of my obsessions is the memory of not knowing. Now, so many of my movie-watching choices are planned in advance. Yet as I grew up in the 70s, we had the opportunity to be surprised by movies on a daily basis. Sure, you could go through the latest issue of TV Guide and highlight every science fiction and horror movie, planning your viewing habits. Yet just as often, the movies listed would not air and you’d have no idea what was coming next.
It wasn’t until I was much older that I realized that horror hosts were playing movies that came in packages. There’s a reason why all those old Universal Monsters got big again at the dawn of the UHF era; those films were in Screen Gems Shock And Son of Shock syndicated packages.
Perhaps the most interesting syndicated package is AVCO Embassy’s Nightmare Theater. Years before they got into the John Carpenter business, this collection of films may have made money for its distributor, but it’s rather astounding that these movies played TV before theaters, although there are some theories* that some played Spanish-speaking grindhouses on the West Coast before being sold to low power UHF stations and horror hosts played them to what had to be somewhat baffled kids.
Nearly every movie that is contained in this collection is delightfully off in the very best of ways. And I have the sneaking suspicion that not much was cut from these films, as some listings – particularly KCOP-13 in Los Angeles — went out of their way to inform younger viewers that these films had some mature content.
Also known as The Witch In Love and Strange Obsession, this movie was based on Carlos Fuentes’ novel Aura. It has two standouts of Italian genre cinema, Richard Johnson and Ivan Rassimov, in the cast and concerns a historian being asked to translate some ancient erotic texts within a haunted library. It had a release in the U.S. by G.G. Productions in August of 1969.
Rarely mentioned amongst the normally cited Bava classics, yet it’s one of my favorites, a film in which Bava even metatexturally references his past work, as the cops are thrown off the case when a scream is explained as a TV playing Black Sunday. Somehow combining elements of the giallo, a nascent slasher, a fashion film and even a mannequin movie, it deserves to be talked about way more often by way more people.
Marta (1971, directed by José Antonio Nieves Conde)
I can’t even imagine how exciting it would have been to catch this film and not be ready for it. Marisa Mell — who was so possessed by the mystical and sexual desire she felt for her co-star and lover Stephen Boyd that they had a real-life exorcism — plays a woman who enters a home dominated by a potentially dead mother and a definitely murdered last wife who looks just like her. Also known as …After That, It Kills the Male and Devours It, which may be the best title ever.
The only domestic film in the package, this was produced by AVCO and concerns a murderer running loose within a mansion, lopping off the heads of those seeking the half-million dollars worth of money hidden within the house. And oh yeah — Agnes Moorehead and a shockingly gory shotgun murder.
This movie opens with Cathy’s Curse level insanity: our lead walks around her house and finds a knife stuck in a wig, a voodoo doll and finally, a bloody cat in her bed. That’s when a little girl appears out of nowhere to inform her that she took care of the stupid cat before running away. Carla follows her to the garage, throws gasoline all over the place and sets everything — including the little girl — on fire. Somehow, the movie tries to follow that, as that woman’s boyfriend dumps her and heads off to a castle!
Sure, it’s nice that you can call up any movie at any time via the internet, but just imagine being a pre-teen at two in the morning in 1977 and being confronted by Paul Naschy becoming El Hombre Lobo after being bit by a yeti, killing himself, being revived by the evil Dr. Ilona Ellmann who also brings back our hero’s ex-wife from the dead and turns her into a werewolf.
This Tigon offering was a remake of a recently ended TV series that was created by several Dr. Who alums. A chemical spill leads to people eating contaminated fish and treating any outsider with the type of British contempt that gets city folk trapped inside burning effigies.
Originally released as La Mansion de la Niebla (The Mansion in the Fog), that title makes plenty of sense, as this is about a group of people all drawn to, well, a foggy mansion. It’s a pretty interesting mix of the gothic Eurohorror of the 60s with 70s giallo.
Sometimes, I get lost in thought and wonder, “Did people seek out Naschy films in the 70s?” I’d like to think they did and were excited that they could potentially see two of them on their local monster shows. This one introduces Alaric de Marnac, a beheaded warlock who returns to life centuries later to get revenge (and star in a sequel, Panic Beats).
Somehow, this aired uncut on Pittsburgh’s beloved Chiller Theater (July 7, 1979 and December 26, 1981), giving everyone in the City of Bridges the opportunity to watch Klaus Kinski push a needle into a girl’s eyeball. Throw in some Ewa Aulin and a trippy vibe and the fact that D’Amato was so happy with the film — his hopes were dashed, sending him on a lifelong quest to just make money instead of art — that he used his real name in the credits: Aristide Massaccesi.
Director Guerín fell — or jumped — from the tower housing the titular bell on the last day of shooting and died. The film was completed by Juan Antonio Bardem. One assumes that Bardem did the best job he could to combine all the many parts that Guerín into some whole. What remains is a movie that is at times brutal and alternatively feels like a dream.Viveca Lindfors name was used often in the ads for this movie, as she was at one time pushed as the new Garbo.
At some point in the mid 70s, some kid in his pajamas had to confront the slow-motion magic of de Ossorio as the director let flow leopard bikini-wearing women with fangs running wild through day for night jungle drinking the blood of their victims when they aren’t being whipped until their clothes fall off.
Paul Naschy plays the mummy and the priest who brings him back to life in Victorian London, teaming with Helga Liné to kidnap, murder and harvest virgin blood. Look — if Naschy wasn’t around for Universal and couldn’t get in a Hammer movie, he was just going to make his own.
There was even a pressbook for this package and three issues of Monster World (March, May and July of 1975) featured extensive coverage of the movies.
My young years were spent watching hours upon hours of movies, not unlike today. The difference then was I had no responsibility outside of making sure I was on time for Superhost on WUAB-43 then ready for Chilly Billy later that night, staying up watching movies until my eyes shut, then waking up for an Abbott and Costello movie. The syndicated movies would give way by the late 80s, due to infomercials actually paying for air time. And by then, just like free TV would ruin movies, video rental stores were decried by Joe Bob because drive-ins were closing. And just a few years later, Blockbuster pushed out the mom and pop stores, then they were gone too.
Today’s high tech world is great. Don’t get me wrong. But the Nightmare Theater package is an amazing moment in genre history, a time when many got to see their first lurid glimpses at Eurohorror.
Information and images in this article were sourced from Mike Mariano, a poster to The Latarnia Forums. The information and images from Monster World come from Zombo’s Closet (www.zomboscloset.com).
Rick Dalton was born in the midwest and moved to Los Angeles where he found his initial fame on the TV series Bounty Law before moving on to a Universal contract that saw him make four movies for the studio before returning to TV to play the villain of the week on shows like The Green Hornet, Mission Impossible and Lancer. He also made plenty of Italian films, like Jigsaw Jane; Kill Me Quick, Ringo, Said TheGringo; Nebraska Jim; Red Blood, Red Skin and Operazione Dyn-O-Mite! He eventually reinvented his career and became a big star of direct-to-video films like The Fireman series and Coming Home In a Body Bag.
Of course, he’s also a fictional character in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In…Hollywood, but Rick Dalton’s Hollywood career has roles in both real and made for the movie movies.
Tarantino has promised an entire book about Rick’s career — in the world of the movies, Tarantino writes the book after meeting Roger Ebert and Dalton at the 1996 Hawaii International Film Festival — and explains every single acting role of Leonard Dicaprio’s character. This book promises to have synopses, critical quotes and notes on Rick’s film and television career until 1988.
That book may or may not be released. Until then, we have this list.
1956
A Strange Adventure: The role of Harold Norton was played by Ben Cooper in our universe, but in the world of Rick Dalton, he played that part in this William Witney movie. Rick wanted the gangster part that Nick Adams got, but ended up playing the guy who gets bullied. William Witney pulled him aside and told him he was doing a good job but knew this role wasn’t suited to him. He promised to get him a better part that would better show his abilities in the future.
Jubal: Rick played Woody in this Delmer Daves-directed movie opposite Glenn Ford, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Steiger, Jack Elam and Charles Bronson. No such character appears in our world.
Away All Boats: Rick has an uncredited part as Private Pickford in this movie.
These Wilder Years: Rick was an uncredited football player in this Roy Rowland-directed, James Cagney and Barbara Stanwyck-starring movie.
1957
Tales of Wells Fargo (season 1, episode 13: “Jesse James): In the universe of Tarantino, Rick Dalton plays Jesse James instead of Hugh Beaumont; he encounters Jim Hardie (Dale Robertson) when he’s accused of robbing a train.
Whirlybirds: A syndicated series produced by Desilu Studios, Rick appeared in an episode directed by Bud Springsteen (who directed eight episodes of the show between 1957 and 1959; he also directed Double Jeopardy).
Rick also appeared in the shows Tombstone Territoryas The Salt Flat Kid in the episode “Wyatt Earp Tells No Tales,” as Jessie James on the “Death at Northfield” episode of Lux Video Theatreand in the “So Long Miss Mulligan” episode of M Squad. This episode does not exist, but supposes an episode where Bette Davis plays the owner of a candy store that’s been menaced by a gang called the High Rollers, which includes Tom Heron as Sunny, Robert Blake as Buzz, Ross Bagdasarian (who became David Seville, the father of Alvin and the Chipmunks) and Rick as gang member #4. During the shooting, Rick kept moving closer to Davis, who saw what he was doing and stood up for him to the director. Rick would later say, “You know, that’s the glory of having a Hollywood career is having good Hollywood stories to tell and I never get tired of telling that when we Miss Davis, especially to young actors.”
1958
Big Sky Country: Part of being a TV actor is being in pilots that aren’t picked up for a series. Rick played the oldest son on this show that was produced by Dick Powell, David Niven, Charles Boyer and Joel McCrea’s Four Star Productions.
Bachelor Father: Rick played Kelly’s (Noreen Corcoran) boyfriend in the episode “Girls Will Be Girls.”
Man with a Camera: In this Charles Bronson-starring series, Rick appeared in the episode “Second Avenue Assassin” as Joey Savoyen.
Tales of Wells Fargo: Rick was Butch Cassidy in the episode “The Hole in the Wall Gang.”
Darby’s Rangers: Rick was Sgt. Hank Bishop in this movie, directed by William A. Wellman and starring James Garner. In real life, that part was played by Stuart Whitman.
Young and Wild: Rick played Richard Edward “Rick” Braden in this Wiliam Witney movie, a part played by Rick Marlowe in our world.
1959
Bounty Law: Rick starred in this series from 1959-1963 and appeared in 48 episodes as Jake Cahill. Produced by Robert Fuzz and Lee Donowitz (who was part of the drug deal in True Romance and is the son of Donny from Inglorious Basterds), several episodes were directed by Paul Wendkos (The Brotherhood of the Bell, The Mephisto Waltz), who Rick would work for through this career. Tarantino has mentioned that Rick was in some of the director’s 70s TV movies.
Rick’s co-stars were Martin Kove and James Remar; the character first appeared on the show The Restless Gun.
This series is based on Wanted Dead or Alive, which starred Steve McQueen. Dalton’s series ran on NBC at the same time McQueen’s ran on CBS and Ty Hardin’s Bronco was on ABC. Beyond the moment where they meet in the film having such dramatic weight, Tarantino’s book had the working title of Rick Dalton: The Man Who Would Be McQueen.
Guest stars on Bounty Law included James Coburn, Lee Van Cleef, Charles Bronson, Vic Morrow, Robert Blake, Claude Akins, Edward G. Robinson, Louis Hayward, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Sammy Davis Jr, Ralph Meeker, Aldo Ray, Tom Laughlin, Howard Duff, Darren McGavin and Rory Calhoun.
On the Video Archives episode that pays tribute to Rick, Roger Avery discussed an episode from season four where Ross Martin played Edward Muybridge while Quentin mentioned several episodes, such as one where Darren McGaven played gunfighter Tom Horn — who would one day be played by Rick’s nemesis Steve McQueen — that was directed by Joseph H. Lewis (Gun Crazy). Another episode, “Incident In Parkertown,” was discussed and this two-parter had Sammy Davis Jr., Dorothy Dandridge and Vic Morrow guest starring.
Battle of the Coral Sea: Rick had a small role in this Paul Wendkos-directed movie which starred Cliff Robertson, L.Q. Jones and Tom Laughlin.
Rick picks Wendkos as his favorite director and talks about this movie when he meets with agent Marvin Schwarz in the novelization. “Yeah, I started out with him in my early days,” Rick replies. “I’m in his Cliff Robertson picture, Battle Of The Coral Sea. You can see me and Tommy Laughlin hangin’ out in the back of the submarine the whole picture.”
Riverboat: Rick appeared in a guest role opposite Burt Reynolds and Darren McGavin in a William Witney (who Tarantino called out as a reference in Kill Bill volume 1, joining Charles Bronson, Lucio Fulci, Sergio Leone, Shaw Brothers regulars Cheng Cheh and Lo Lieh, Djangodirector Sergio Corbucci and Lee Van Cleef)-directed episode. Witney directed six episodes during this time period that could be the one that Rick was in.
Drag Race, No Stop: Another William Witney film — this time one not from our reality — that had Rick as the lead and a cast that included Gene Evans, John Ashley and Richard Bakalyan. It was written by Vanishing Pointdirector Richard C. Sarafian.
1961
Commanche Uprising: Another fictional film, it had Rick in a cast that includes Robert Taylor, Joan Evans, Claude Akins, Charles Bronson, Jay C. Flippen, Michael Dante and Tarantino’s acting coach in our reality, James Best. It was directed by Bud Springsteen and written by Samuel A. Peeples, the creator of Lancer. The poster is based on Navajo Joe.
The Chapman Report: In this George Cukor-directed film — an actual movie in our universe — Rick played Ed Kraski, who was portrayed by Ty Hardin in real life. That actor, who left Hollywood to make movies in Italy — like Sergio Corbucci’s Eurospy movie Death on the Run — was an inspiration for the fictional Rick.
1963
Big Game: Another fictional movie, this time directed by Stewart Granger.
1964
Hellfire,Texas: Rick appeared in this fictional adaption of the real book by Nelson and Shirley Wolford, which in our world was made as A Time for Killing. Both worlds have the same cast — Glenn Ford, Inger Stevens — and Phil Karlson directing.
1965
Tanner: Based on the Phil Karlsen film Gunman’s Walk, this was a big movie for Rick, as he even promoted it on an episode of Hullabaloo with The Kinks that had Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello as hosts. This film was directed — in the movie world — by Jerry Hopper.
1966
Jigsaw Jane: Rick played the killer in this pre-Argento giallo-style thriller that co-starred Suzanne Pleshette, Paul Burke, Jack Cassidy, Lloyd Bochner, Alice Ghostley and Aldo Ray. It was directed by TV movie king David Lowell Rich and written by Jerome Zastoupil, who is actually Tarantino (it’s his middle name and the last name of his stepfather).
The 14 Fists of McClusky: This movie is why Rick had a working flamethrower in his garage, the exact one he used to burn up Susan Atkins. Based on Roger Corman’s 1964 film The Secret Invasion, Phil Karlson’s Hornets’ Nest and Rober Aldrich’s The Dirty Dozen, Rick stepped in to replace Fabian Forte after the singer injured his shoulder. The 14 Fists of McClusky also had Rod Taylor as McClusky (a name Tarantino used as the warden in Natural Born Killers; it’s Burt Reynolds’ last name in Gator; Rod Taylor’s last movie was Inglorious Basterds), Virna Lisi, Sal Mineo, Van Johnson, Tom Laughlin, Kaz Garas and Adam West. Directed by Paul Wendkos, the footage shown in Once Upon a Time In…Hollywood is from Stole Janković’s 1974 movie Hell River.
There’s also a fan poster by Octavio Terol for the Italian release of this film under the title Combaterre All’Inferno (Combat In Hell) that I imagine was re-released in Italy after Rick became a star there.
1967
Rick returned to TV after his movie career didn’t work out and was often a guest star or villain of the week on shows like:
Tarzan: Directed again by William Witney — who had several episodes in season 2 of this show, which would be 1967 — Rick played Brick Bradford in the episode “Jewel of the Jungle.”
Bingo Martin: In the episode “Hell to Pay,” Rick was Rocky Ryan. This is a fictional show that starred the fictional actor Scott Brown.
The Green Hornet: Rick appeared in an episode called “Hornet Hunter” as Thompson Shaw which is a lot like the episode “Invasion from Outer Space.” In that episode, Gary Kent served as the stunt coordinator on the episode. Kent was married to stunt woman Tomi Barrett, so we can see him as Randy Miller (Kurt Russell) who is married to Janet (Zoë Bell). Randy is, of course, the brother of Mike Miller, the killer from Death Proof. This would also be when Cliff Booth fought Bruce Lee.
Salty, The Talking Sea Otter: Rick signed a four-picture deal with Universal and his performance in this movie ended it. He played Jed Martin in this movie which seems based on the Ricou Browning movie Salty, which is about a sea lion.
1968
Rick only made one appearance in this rough year:
Land of the Giants: Rick was Dr. David Hellstrom in “The Capture.” This episode had to have been directed by either Irwin Allen, Sobey Martin, Henry Harris or my pick, Nathan Juran, who directed The Brain from Planet Arous, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.
1969
The F.B.I.: William A. Graham directed “All the Streets Are Silent,” the eleventh episode of the first season of this show. Rick played the part of Michael Murtaugh. In our world, Burt Reynolds played that role.
Lancer: Rick appeared as villain Caleb DeCoteau in the pilot of this show. This is where he’d meet child actor Trudi Frazer and director Sam Wanamaker (played by TV Spider-Man Nicolas Hammond) and discover that he had a future as an actor. The real Wanamaker would direct Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.
After meeting with his agent Marvin Schwarz, Rick would have dinner with Sergio Corbucci and his wife, costume designer Nori Bonicelli. The actor didn’t know much about Italian films — this is not a unique thing, as when Sergio Leone came to America, he struggled to find actors willing to make a movie with him — and he confuses Corbucci with Sergio Leone and doesn’t respect him much, but goes to Italy to make movies anyway.
Sergio replies, “He’s Sergio Fatso, I’m Sergio not so fatso.”
The other actors Sergio considered were Robert Fuller, Gary Lockwood and Ty Hardin. Rick made fun of all of them and got the part.
Kill Me Quick, Ringo, Said The Gringo: Rick plays Ringo, a role that several Americans — Mark Damon, Montgomery Wood and Ken Clark are others — played. The poster artist for so many Italian movies, Renato Casaro, painted the poster that appears in the movie. This movie was directed by Calvin Jackson Padget, who is really Giorgio Ferroni, the director of Mill of the Stone Women.
1970
Nebraska Jim: Tarantino knows his Italian westerns. Savage Gringo AKA Gunman from Nebraska was called Nebraska Jim in Germany. Rick starred in this movie with Daphna Ben-Cobo, who is played by Tarantino’s wife Daniella Pick. Rick told Corbucci that he didn’t have to like Spaghetti Westerns or even acting to be good in them. He wanted to be a cowboy as a kid and that’s what makes him so good.
On the Video Archives show, Quentin said that this was one of his favorite movies and Dalton said that it was his best Italian movie (“by a lot, really” he adds).
Red Blood, Red Skin: Based on the novel The Only Good Indian Is a Dead Indian by Floyd Ray Wilson (whose name inspired the boxer Butch kills inPulp Fiction), this movie was inspired by the Nathan Juran-directed Land Raiders and shares its star — Telly Savalas — but also has Carroll Baker in its cast. It was directed — in the movie universe — by Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent, who made a movie that had to have influenced Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, the gore-filled Cut-Throats Nine.
After this movie, Rick decided that he had to go home. He didn’t get Italian Westerns and “rejected what he couldn’t comprehend.” He also had a major issue with the way the filmmakers in Italy and Spain treated the horses.
Cannon for Cordoba: This is a real movie, shot in Spain by Paul Wendkos and starring George Peppard. Rick would play the part of Jackson Harkness, which Don Gordon did in our timeline. Pete Duel, an actor who inspired Rick thanks to his alcoholism and an undiagnosed bipolar disorder, is also in this.
Hell Boats: A Wendkos movie that Rick acted in opposite James Franciscus.
Operazione Dyn-O-Mite!: Rick played Jason in this Eurospy movie directed by Antonio Margheriti. The footage in the movie comes from Sergio Corbucci’s Moving Target.
Rick also appeared on the shows Matt Lincolnand Mission: Impossible in 1970 and had some level of new fame after saving the life of Sharon Tate.
Tarantino said, “But the thing is, on the episodic-TV circuit, he’s a bigger name now. He’s not quite Darren McGavin, all right? Darren McGavin would get paid the highest you could get paid as a guest star back in that time. But Rick’s about where John Saxon was, maybe just a little bit higher. So he’s getting good money and doing the best shows. And the episodes are all built around him. So as opposed to doing Land of the Giants and Bingo Martin, now he’s the bad guy on Mission: Impossible, and it’s his episode.”
1971
Rick appeared on the shows Cade’s Countyand Benacaek, a show that starred George Peppard. Perhaps in this universe, Rick was able to tell Peppard to stay on his show and not end it for a movie career.
Cade’s County: Dalton’s guest role on the 70s neo-Western series Cade’s County saw him playing a confused criminal convinced he’s the reincarnation of Billy The Kid…with a bazooka. This episode was later repackaged with another Cade’s County episode as the TV movie The Marshal Of Madrid. Both episodes were directed by Richard Donner.
1972
Night Gallery “The Ring With the Red Velvet Ropes“: Rick appeared as James Figg, a boxer who is stolen away to a mysterious elite hotel, where he’s to fight an old boxing champ that no one has ever beaten named Roderick Blanco (Chuck Conners). A remake — kinda — of ” A Game of Pool” from the original Twilight Zone, this has Joan Van Ark as Blanco’s wife, was directed by Jeannot Szwarc and was written by Robert Malcolm Young (Starflight: The Plane That Couldn’t Land, The Ghost of Flight 401, Locusts and The Crawling Hand). It was taken from a story by Edward D. Hoch.
The Deadly Trackers: Rick was in this movie, directed by Barry Shear, along with Richard Harris, Rod Taylor and Al Lettieri.
1974
Manhunter:This TV movie became the pilot for the Quinn Martin-produced TV series The Manhunter. Yes, Rick was again playing a bounty hunter, this time chasing Stefanie Powers and Gary Lockwood as a pair of Bonnie and Clyde style bank robbers in Depression-era Idaho.
The first episode of the show, which aired opposite Cannon and Get Christie Love, had guest stars Ida Lupino as a Ma Barker-like villain and Don Stroud and Sam Watterson as her sons. Other guest stars included Bo Hopkins as Pretty Boy Floyd, Joan Van Ark, Tom Skerritt, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Foxworth, Celeste Holmes, Shirley Knight, Kevin McCarthy and Woody Strode.
The show got cancelled due to controversy about its violence and was replaced with repeats of Dan August.
Rick went on to star in three seasons of The Truckies, taking the role that Michael Aitkens played in our world.
1975
Baretta: Rick told Quentin Tarantino in their interview at the Hawaiian International Film Festival that his friend Robert Blake got him a great role in an episode of this show and also got him his full rate.
1976
An excerpt from a book The Films of Rick Dalton was read on Video Archives and explained how Rick was finally coming to terms with his career. “Soon Dalton could be seen sitting behind a desk surrounded by Paul Lynn, Wally Cox and Charlie Weaver on the Hollywood Squares, playing guessing games on Password and The $20,000 Pyramid, bowling spares on Celebrity Bowling, horsing around and filling in the blanks with Richard Dawson, Brett Summers and Charles Nelson Reilly on Match Game and acting cute with the other Hollywood couples on Tattletales. Francesca with her ditzy Italian shtick was a big hit. And for the rest of the decade, Rick could be seen on the couch of Mike, Merv and Dinah yucking it up with Henry Winkler, Ben Vereen, Joe Namath, Brent Vaccaro and the rest. The end result of all this horsing around was to a large degree, Rick Dalton was enjoying his Hollywood career in a way he never had up until then. He could still get movies from time to time. But he knew he’d never be a movie star. He’d never do as good as Burt Reynolds or Steve McQueen. Frankly, he’d be happy to do as good as William Shatner or Robert Culp, both actors who were serious draws on TV movies as Burt and Steve were in theatrical films. But with that realization came an inner peace that had eluded Rick his whole career. But not just a feeling of inner peace, but a sense of humor about himself that was completely absent in the first half of his career. And you can see it when he flirts with Diana or teases Merv or just has fun on Match Game and Tattletales. Rick was finally having fun being a TV star.”
DingoDan: This was an Australian TV series that Rick worked on.
1977
Grizzly: Rick played Don Stober instead of Andrew Prine in the timeline of the movies.
1980s
Blastfighter (1984): In the world of Quentin Tarantino, the role of Jake “Tiger” Sharp is not played by Michael Sopkiw but instead by Rick Dalton. In his Hawaii interview with Dalton. Quentin mentions that this is one of his favorite movies, along with Monster Shark — and Rick says that of his eighties movies, it’s one of the better ones.
Jungle Raiders(1985): Rick takes the place of Christopher Connelly in his universe, playing Duke “Captain Yankee” Howard in this movie by Antonio Margheriti.
Operation Nam (1986): The role of Roger Carson may have been played by Christopher Connelly in our world, but in the Tarantino Cinematic Universe, Rick Dalton took the lead in this dark take on what it would be like for men to go back to Vietnam and save their friends there. Well, they all pay for it in a wild movie that defies expectations, as do many of the movies made by Fabrizio De Angelis.
The Fireman: Rick was in a series of direct-to-video movies in which he — according to Screen Rant — plays a cop and Vietnam vet whose discover of police corruption leads to the death of his young partner, played by Samuel Jackson. Jane Kennedy also was in this movie.
Dressing as a firefighter and using the flamethrower that Rick would forever be known for, his character sets criminals on fire in a movie a lot like Exterminator 2.
Rick produced and directed this movie with Cliff doing the action scenes. It led to two sequels and a whole new career of Rick making VHS era ripoffs of bigger action movies and working with Cannon Films.
Tarantino said, “Cliff Booth in 1979 or ’80, wrote a vigilante exploitation movie for Rick … Rick read it and goes, “We can do this better,” so Rick rewrites it and the two of them are going to produce it, they get the money, and it’s a vigilante movie called The Fireman. The lead character was in the Vietnam War — it’s very similar to The Exterminator — he became a cop and then he started seeing this whole group of bad apple cops that are killing guys and are completely corrupt. And they end up killing his partner, played by a very young Samuel L. Jackson. The film becomes a real big hit, and that makes Rick, he gets a third career, going into the ’80s, as a straight to video action star.”
Cliff would direct The Fireman 2, which moved the action to Texas and had Joe Don Baker and Donald Pleasence in the cast. The Fireman 3: CIA Crackdownwould follow a few years later (Fred Williamson, Monte Markam and William Smith also appear in this movie).
Coming Home In a Body Bag: Rick starred in this Anthony Irvin-directed, Anthony Irvin-produced movie that gets discussed in True Romance. It also had Somerset O’Neal in the cast, who played the leader of Fox Force Five, a pilot for a TV show that also had Mia Wallace as the deadliest woman in the world with a knife, Raven McCoy. That show within a movie — Pulp Fiction — is based on The Doll Squad.
One surmises that the fatal ending of True Romance kept the sequel from getting made.
Rick retired in 1988 after his action stardom brought him back one more time to Italy as well as the Philippines. He moves to Hawaii with his wife Francesca Capucci and meets Tarantino at the 1996 Hawaii International Film Festival.
Movies Rick didn’t get:
Rick lost out on the role of Lover Boy in Gidgetto Tom Laughlin and Virgil “The Cooler King” Hilts in The Great Escape to Steve McQueen. He also offered to play Hud Dixon in The Specialists but Sergio Corbucci went with Johnny Hallyday.
Ads Rick was in:
Old Chattanooga Beer: Rick did a commercial for this beer on an episode of Bounty Law. The same beer shows up in Death Proof.
Big Kahuna Burger: Rick said “Pineapple? On my burger?” before the commercial was shot, which ended up being in the ad and in five more commercials over the next two years.
Plenty of directors have made extreme cinema. However, only a few have been arrested for murder and owned the title Monsieur Cannibal.
Ruggero Deodato started life as a music prodigy, directing an orchestra by the age of seven before quitting once his teacher sent him away for playing by ear. Through his friendship with Renzo Rossellini, he started working with Renzo’s father Roberto and Sergio Corbucci, who he worked with as the assistant director for Django.
Deodato also made three movies of his own, Hercules, Prisoner of Evil; Phenomenal and the Treasure of Tutankhamen; Gungala, the Black Panther Girl; Donne… botte e bersaglieri, Vacanze sulla Costa Smeralda, I quattro del pater noster, Zenabel and the TV series Il triangolo rosso and All’ultimo minuto before leaving to work in advertising.
It was during this period that he met his first wife, Silvia Dionisio, who you may recognize from Blood for Dracula and the two films that brought Deodato back to directing, Waves of Lust and the astounding Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man.
It was in 1977 that Deodato would plant his flag in the genre that he is best known for: the cannibal film. While these movies have their roots in the jungle adventure genre, they really took root when Umberto Lenzi made The Man from Deep River in 1972. Released as Sacrifice! in the U.S., it was basically a remix of A Man Called Horse yet set in the Green Inferno. Deodato would take that film and push it with a series of cannibal-themed movies like Jungle Holocaust (aka Last Cannibal World) and Cannibal Holocaust, the watershed of all cannibal and found footage films.
Lenzi claims that the only reason Deodato got to make Jungle Holocaust was because he was busy making Almost Human and wasn’t offered enough money by the producers; this could just be part of the somewhat feud between the two directors, as when Lenzi made Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly) in 1980, Deodato said, “I think the forefather of the cannibal genre was me. I had not seen Umberto Lenzi’s movie Man from Deep River. So my film, Last Cannibal World, really originated, and was written to start this whole cannibal trend. I studied a lot of books on the subject and documented some of it from National Geographic magazine as well. I also looked closely at the ritualism of cannibalism and I don’t believe Lenzi did that with his film. Maybe Lenzi did it after I made Last Cannibal World. You know, when he went on to do Cannibal Ferox. He didn’t do it first, that’s for sure. When I finally saw his film, it was more of a copy of A Man Called Horse.”
Maybe Luigi Cozzi is the arbitrator of this argument. He said, “To me, the real beginning of the cannibal genre is Cannibal Holocaust. It was a legitimate success at the box office, but not in Italy as it was banned, blocked and withheld. They distributed it at a later date, but it was dead by then. However, it did astonishing business abroad.”
Cannibal Holocaustis either a work of exploitation junk madness or an art film inspired by the political unrest of Italy at the time. Can it — perhaps by accident — be both? How strange is it when the filmmakers — particularly Deodato if interviews by the cast are any indication — are just as bad if not worse than the characters on screen?
Ten days after the movie’s premiere, it was confiscated under the orders of a local magistrate and Deodato was charged with obscenity, which if you’ve watched any Italian films is incredible with the sheer outrages one sees in these films. And then, in one of those no news is bad news PR moments, the charges against Deodato soon included murder, as some believed the actors who portrayed the missing film crew and the impaled actress were actually murdered. This could be the ultimate kayfabe press story, but the actors — who some claim were told to hide for some months to get across the idea that this was a real snuff film — and special effects crew were called to court to prove Deodato’s innocence. That said, he received a four-month suspended sentence for obscenity and animal cruelty as eight real animals were murdered during the making of the movie. The film didn’t play Italy uncut until 1984.
It’s also on the list of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the UK press and various organizations such as the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association. You can read more about the Video Nasties in our three-part article. Start with part one, which has Deodato’s cannibal film, right here.
The director also made Last Feelings and Concorde Affaire ’79 during this period as he fought to retain his directing license.
As groundbreaking as Deodato was before 1980, I believe that he made movies just as interesting and wild after, starting with his Last House on the Left-influenced House on the Edge of the Park, a movie so indebted to Craven’s movie that it even has star David Hess in the cast. As I wrote in my initial review of the film, “Deodato makes a film that continually assaults not just the characters” and again, it found one of his movies on the section 1 Video Nasty list.
Billed in the U.S. as Richard Franklin, Deodato’s next film would be the improbable Raiders of the Lost Ark/Road Warrior mix and match that is Atlantis Interceptors (aka Raiders of Atlantis), which has an all-star — well, Italian exploitation all-star — cast including Christopher Connelly, George Hilton, Ivan Rassimov and a young Michele Soavi.
The slasher boom in the U.S. led to two larger budget films for Deodato.
Cut and Run was intended as a Wes Craven film and had an R-rated and international cut packed with more of the wildness that Deodato was known for. Fran Hudson (Lisa Blount, Prince of Darkness) is investigating a war in the jungles of South America between drug cartels and the army of Colonel Brian Horne (Richard Lynch), who has a gigantic assassin named Quencho (Michael Berryman) on his side. Plus, you get Willie Aames in a Mickey Mouse shirt, Karen Black, Eriq La Salle, Gabriele Tinti, John Steiner and Barbara Magnolfi. It’s as if the big world of Hollywood has met the Italian industry for this one, which features bodies torn in half and crucified, as well as references to Jonestown.
The second larger budget film Deodato worked on was Body Count, which has Charles Napier, Ivan Rassimov, John Steiner, Cynthia Thompson, David Hess and Mimsy Farmer in a movie that combines the stalk and slash camp action of Crystal Lake with the haunted burial ground of Cuesta Verde. It also has an RV, dirt bikes and a blaring synth score from Claudio Simonetti. It’s also the kind of movie that claims to be in Colorado yet was shot in the Cascate di Monte Gelato forest park.
Like most Italian exploitation directors, Deodato tried nearly any genre that was hot at the time. The Lone Runner is the next example. This post-apocalyptic film stars Italian mainstay Miles O’Keefe (the Ator series), Raiders of the Lost Ark bad guy Ronald Lacey, John Steiner, Hal Yamanouchi and Yugoslavian actress Savina Gersak, who ends up in all manner of movies I obsess over, including Iron Warrior, Afghanistan – The Last War Bus, Curse II: The Bite, Beyond the Door III and Midnight Ride.
Deodato’s next film, The Barbarians, moves into another Italian-beloved genre, the peplum film by way of Conan the Barbarian pastiche. This was a well-trod genre for the director, as the first movie he made was Hercules, Prisoner of Evil.
What would be better than one barbarian? How about two? Twin brothers — The Barbarian Brothers! Made for Cannon Films, with a script by James R. Silke (Ninja 3: The Domination, Revenge of the Ninja), this takes the best of the venerable Cannon and throws in Italian stars with America talent, so Richard Lynch and Michael Berryman appear in the same movie as George Eastman and Virginia Bryant.
A movie that is almost the entire Conan movie redone with double the brawny beefcake swordsmen, this movie is fun from start to finish, with an episodic story that takes the brothers from young members of a circus to battle gigantic monsters.
The next film that Deodato would direct was Phantom of Death, a way late in the cycle giallo with horror elements that boasts Michael York as a man aging prematurely, Donald Pleasence as an inspector and Edwige Fenech as the love interest. This is one of the few films in which you can hear Fenech’s voice undubbed.
Dial:Help is one of the strangest films in Deodato’s career, a mix of horror, giallo and telephones acting as both protector and antagonist for Charlotte Lewis. Working from a script by Franco Ferrini (Phenomena, Sleepless, Opera), this is probably the most gorgeous of all the movies Deodato would direct, including a wild scene that shows the reason behind these murderous phones: an abandoned phone line for people who had their hearts broken, an office where all of the operators are dead and can reach out from the other side. It’s a crime that this movie isn’t yet available on blu ray.
Deodato also worked in Italian TV, making two episodes of Il Racatto, the mini-series Ocean (which features David Hess, Michael Berryman and Martin Balsam), eight episodes of I ragazzi del muretto, six episodes of We Are Angels (featuring the wild team of Bud Spencer and Philip Michael Thomas as criminals hiding out as monks; it also has appearances by Hess, Berryman, Richard Lynch and Erik Estrada), ten of the Carol Alt-starring Thinking About Africa, an episode of Incantesimo 8 and the TV movie Padre Speranza (Father Hope), which stars Spencer.
Deodato also made two theatrical films in the early 90s, the child-friendly drama Mom I Can Do It, starring American actors Chistopher Mattheson and Elisabeth Kemp (He Knows You’re Alone) and The Washing Machine, a sex-packed giallo tale of three sisters, murder and dead bodies found inside washing machines. Again, sadly, this has not yet been reissued in the U.S. so it hasn’t found an appreciative audience.
An appearance by Deodato in big fan Eli Roth’s film Hostel: Part II — which also has a cameos by Fenech as an art class professor — led to the director appearing in films like The Museum of Wonders, Endless Dark, Phantasmagoria and the Italian horror history-referencing Lilith’s Hell in which he plays himself.
After an eight year break, Deodato would direct a segment in The Profane Exhibit, the short Io e mia figlia and a segment in Deathcember. He also would make Ballad In Blood, his first full-length movie in a quarter century. Based on the Meredith Kercher murder case, it retains much of the headline chasing, boundary pushing blood and sleaze that Deodato has traded in for his entire career. Recently available from Severin in the U.S., one can only hope that the label finds a way to bring official releases of his other films to American collectors.
Deodato has also found his way into numerous documentaries — Shudder devoted an entire episode of Cursed Films to his most notorious movie and he’s one of the main interviews in The Found Footage Phenomenon— and has even been the subject of several himself, including Deodato Holocaust.
While Deodato’s films aren’t for everyone, they are important movies to study and enjoy for those willing to take the journey. He’s certainly one of the more interesting Italian filmmakers and one of the last surviving links to the heyday of 70s and 80s darkness that emerged from the country.
Sadly, died on December 29, 2022 at the age of 83. He leaves behind not just a cannibal that changed movies forever, but a rich career filled with movies worth exploring.
A couple of weeks ago on the Drive-In Asylum Double Feature, Bill, Gigi and I were discussing why there weren’t more disco-based slasher movies. Sure, disco died — or so they say, but it never went away and we all know and love this — during Disco Demolition Night on Thursday, July 12, 1979 in Chicago.
That said — Halloween came out in 1978 and disco-based films were still coming out as late as 1980. So why didn’t the slasher genre create more disco-based films?
Here are the few that are agreed upon disco slashers. Can you think of any other ones? We’d appreciate finding more!
Keep in mind — we’re not discussing rave movies or just movies set in nightclubs. And no, even though Phantasm has a flying silver ball, it’s not a disco slasher. Carrie has a disco ball too, but I just don’t think it belongs. This would also write off movies like Hellraiser III, Terminatorand Blade. Nightclubs and raves don’t count.
Prom Night: Perhaps the most well-known of all the few disco slashers, Prom Night came out in 1980, just at the time that there was that strange disco backlash. There’s a story that this movie was shot with the actors dancing to tracks by Gloria Gaynor, Donna Summer, France Joli and Pat Benatar, but according to composer Paul Zaza, the publishing rights to the songs were larger than the budget of a Canadian tax shelter slasher could afford.
According to the documentary The Horrors of Hamilton High: The Making of Prom Night, producer Peter Simpson had Zaza xerox those songs and do slightly different remixes of them for use in the movie. The resulting $10 million dollar copyright lawsuit was settled for $50,000.
The soundtrack was released — originally — only in Japan and the music made its way into other Zaza-scored movies like Ghostkeeper and Curtains.
Don’t Go in the House: With a psychopath who falls asleep listening to loud music on headphones finds himself leaving the safety of rock and roll for the sped up cocaine beats of disco, you can only imagine that the least of his sins is throwing a candle at a young dancer’s hairspray filled coif, an act that barely gets her friends to stop doing the hustle.
A truly mean spirited blast of sheer degeneracy — and therefore everything wonderful about the slasher form — Don’t Go In the House has songs like “Boogie Lightning,” “Dancin’ Close to You,” “Straight Ahead” and “Late Night Surrender” playing in between moments of women being set ablaze and a mother rotting somewhere in a house that has an impossibly huge torture chamber in the basement.
Bloody Moon: Leave it to Jess Franco to embrace not only the slasher, but disco. Throbbing beats play over a poolside disco party, killers with ruined faces, incest, bladesaw butchery, kids getting hit by cars and roller disco. It’s one of those slashers that you keep on saying, “Surely there’s no way they’ll take things this far,” and then Franco says, “I’m actually kind of feeling restrained by this movie and you should see when I really go for it.”
Discopath: While made more than 25 years after the other examples on this list, this is all about a New York fast food cook who goes into a trance killing statue — murderdrone? — whenever he hears disco. After a series of killings, he runs to Montreal and begins wearing special clothing that cuts out sound and makes him almost deaf. But when a surprise disco party at the school where he works as an audio-visual tech goes down, the rage comes back.
House on the Edge of the Park: Before their night of psychosexual madness, Alex and Ricky were planning on going to the disco. So when a disco party breaks out in Gloria’s house and she humiliates Ricky by making him strip and drink, is it any wonder that Alex remembers he’s David Hess and takes over the party, beating people, tying them up and pissing all over them?
Riz Ortolani is seriously astounding, the only music man I can think of that would pair cannibals impaling someone from ass to mouth with a gorgeous sad song. So beyond Cannibal Holocaust, the songs “Sweetly” and “Do It to Me” in this movie just flat out get me ready for the strobe light.
Eyes of Laura Mars: Alright, this might be more disco giallo than disco slasher, but go with us for this. KC & the Sunshine Band and Odyssey are on the soundtrack, so that’s more than enough to qualify this for the list.
Actually, this is totally a disco slasher because beyond the music, disco is all about fashion. And this movie, well, it is fashion. It’s a movie that I want more people to see and appreciate, as it has some really wild moments.
I’ve debated including The Disco Exorcist, but it’s not a slasher. Climax has some great dancing scenes and death as well, but it feels too EDM. Cruising is more punk rock and BDSM and murder mystery than slasher. Fright Night is more nightclub than disco. And Murder Rock feels more Flashdance than Can’t Stop the Music.
The sad fact is that there should be so many more disco slashers. Hopefully, you can think of a few more and put them in the comments.
Finally — something fun that I found as I was writing this:
Spacetoonz are awesome — making DJ video mixtapes of some of our favorite horror movies. Their new mix — Bloody Disco Balls — has a preview on Vimeo and you can buy it now from Diabolik DVD.
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