June 30: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Italian horror!

“A dark and gloomy theatre set for strange castings. An awful and neglected villa. A stage writer who pushes young actresses to put themselves at risk in morbid auditions thick with physical pain and pleasure. Around the writer stir his ancient and sick mother, his agent/stepfather, the aspiring actors and a young actress with whom he falls in love. Who is the torturer who tears to pieces the bodies of the implausible actresses?”

Shot on digital video and directed by Lamberto Bava, this film was written by Bava, Diego Cestino, and Andrea Valentini. It was based on a story by Dardano Sacchetti, Luciano Martino, and Michele Massimo Tarantini.

It’s as if Lamberto saw all the torture porn being made and said, “This is pretty much giallo with more violence. Maybe more nudity. Maybe we make this more sleazy! Hey — I know how to do these films. My dad made The Whip and the Body!”

Ginette Cazonni (Elena Bouryka) auditions for the new movie by director Alex Scerba (Simone Corrente) and ends up in bed with him. When she wakes up in the morning, she finds an earring that resembles the one her missing friend, Marzia, used to wear. It turns out that she also had an audition with the director before she disappeared. And oh yes, Alex’s mother and stepfather are both weird in their own ways. And if you’re looking for that other missing earring, well, Alex’s mother is wearing it.

Look, no matter how handsome a director is, if he’s off camera using a voice box to tell you to get naked and do things for him, perhaps you’re in a movie like this. And man, this movie! Lamberto must have gone down to Argento’s basement under Profundo Rosso and communicated with Fulci, because this sees New York Ripper and raises it a lunatic with a blowtorch and a barbed wire whip, all shown in full detail. I can only imagine Lamberto laughing at the young kids like Eli Roth and saying, “This isn’t so difficult.”

Ladies — in the world of Giallo and in the real plane of existence that we live on — if your boyfriend goes insane when he sees toy cars but then immediately wants to have sex with you, please get out.

This is way late in the Giallo film cycle, but it gets the memo right. You want gorgeous women, you want a nonsensical plot, you want family issues and this has it all. You may not want to watch naked girls get torn up with whips, but it was 2005, after all. At least Lamberto was still out there making movies, the last of a dying breed.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 29: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is ‘80s Action!

Years ago, Jack Maraccio (Anthony East) killed the parents of Mark Quinn (Rom Kristoff). Mark didn’t grow up to be Batman. No, he’s a cop and working with his partner Ty Jackson (Jim Moss), he’s keeping the Philippines safe.

Imagine if you took Rambo: First Blood Part II, Rocky and Cobra, threw them in a cup with raw eggs and drank it before running up some steps and blowing things up. That’s this movie, which has a cover that looks just like Marion Cobretti, which was totally an accident and no one meant for it to look that way. Nor did they intend for Jim Gaines’ pimp character named Sly to make you think of anyone else by that name. As for our hero, Kristoff never takes his glasses off, was raised by a ninja and is now a ninja himself, something Stallone never did.

This was directed and written by Teddy Page, who also made Fireback, Jungle Rats, Blazing Guns and so many more movies like this before using the name Teddy Chuck as a first assistant director for movies like The Love Nights of Anthony and Cleopatra (Hakkan Serbes is in that and if you got excited, you’re a pervert), Samson in the Amazon’s Land, Raiders, Sodoma & Gomorra and Showgirl. Yes, Joe D’Amato adult films. I would call that making it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 28: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Cannon!

I’ve watched 162/162 of all Cannon films — Golan and Globus era — as well as 56/56 of the Dewey/Friedland years, 106/246 of the Cannon Home Video releases, 6 out of the 12 movies Golan and Globus did before Cannon, 39 of the 39 movies that Golan made as 21st Century after Cannon, 111 of the 127 21st Century films under Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer version, 31 of the 69 Cannon theatrical releases they didn’t produce, all 8 of the Golan/Globus 1970s films, all 35 of the Assonitis-Globus-Pearce Cannon films and 2 of the 20 Pathé — Cannon’s sister company — releases, as well as 3 of the 23 movies Pathé released as Cannon and 22 of the 68 Pathé Cannon video releases.

There aren’t many Cannon movies left for me.

However, there is this film, which was directed and produced by Menahem Golan for American-International Pictures. Well, it was co-directed, as it’s said that Raphael Nussbaum assisted. You may know him from 1973’s Pets or the Frank Stallone movie Death Blow for Justice, AKA W.A.R.: Women Against Rape.

Starring Audie Murphy in his first non-Western since 1958, this has him playing Mike Merrick, a spy sent to Egypt to stop German scientist Professor Schlieben (George Sanders), who is developing a rocket that can be shot into the United States. Then, Muslims attack, wanting to destroy the rocket on their own and kill the American. So he runs, taking the scientist’s daughter (Marianne Koch, The Unnaturals) and tries to escape.

Written by Marc Bohm (who would also write X-Ray for Cannon) and Alexander Ramati (whose The Assisi Underground was a Cannon movie, too), this almost starred Stephen Boyd and Senta Berger.

Audie Murphy may have been a war hero, but he’s no James Bond. Also, there is so much day for night and night for day.

June 27: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space!

In June 1994, George Romero came to Florida’s Valencia College to film a movie he’d wanted to make for some time—or at least part of it.

Working with students at the school, he shot a few minutes of Jacaranda Joe, a movie that was called The Footage in the 1970s. Pre-found footage mania, Romero wondered if a documentary could scare audiences. This would be at some point between The Crazies and Martin, so 1973-1978, during the time that Romero was working on O.J. Simpson: Juice On the Loose and three episodes of the TV series The Winners on Pittsburgh sports heroes Willie Stargell, Bruno Sammartino and Franco Harris.

Keep that sports hero part in your head for a bit.

In all three scripts that were written — major credit due to the University of Pittsburgh Horror Studies website for so many references — a show called Outdoorsman USA brings on major stars and athletes on authentic hunting and fishing trips that are captured raw and shared with the TV audience. There were two different versions —  the “Franco Version” has the beneficiary of Franco’s Italian Army and the man who made the Immaculate Reception playing star quarterback Johnny Wilson, who is trying to leave the NFL behind while the other version has Johnny Shaw, “a star NFL quarterback who is just beginning a career as a country and western recording artist,” who has to be Terry Bradshaw — of who the hero would be, but the action is similar. Somehow, someone kidnaps a baby sasquatch, and the family starts to chase the humans, kind of like Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues, but many years before.

Jacaranda Joe was written by Romero knowing that he would be filming for just ten days with young filmmakers. Valencia had a great class, obviously, as Robert Wise did the same class the year before. In this version, there is a skunk ape in the woods that is found by the crew of Remington, a TV talk show very much like the Geraldo and Sally Jessy Raphael-type shows — Sally Jessy is even mentioned — of the day.

This played on April 10, 2022, thanks to the University of Pittsburgh. Because all things online are captured, it’s in the Internet Archive. There’s not much more than a few scenes, but as you can imagine, it’s exciting to see a new George Romero film. It was also the first movie that the director made entirely outside of Pittsburgh, but not the last.

June 26: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Eurosploitation!

I due superpiedi quasi piatti (The Two Almost Flat Superfeet) puts Terence Hill and Bud Spencer together again (it is the tenth of seventeen movies they would be in together) and sends them to Miami.

In this film, they’re Matt Kirby and Wilbur Walsh, longshoremen who decide to rob a grocery store and, in the process, end up being cops. Look, this is even years before Police Academy, and it has a lot of the same notions.

Somehow, they got David Huddleston to be in this as Captain McBride, who is in charge of the boys. Soon, they all learn that the same criminals who controlled the docks where they worked are behind a lot more.

Also known as Trinity: In Trouble Again, Two Supercops and Crime Busters, this is not related to Miami Supercops, another Hill and Spencer movie. Hill and Spencer made five movies in Miami that are in my favorite genre: Italians making their movies partially in America.

There’s even more meta in here, as a hot dog cart plays the theme song of their movie,  Even Angels Eat Beans. During a scene where Matt is trying to get Wilbur to be kinder, he remarks, “He who finds a friend finds a treasure.” That would be a future Hill and Spencer title.

If you’ve seen any of those, you know what this movie is all about. Hill is the good-looking nice one, and Spencer is the giant grump. Somehow, they may not start as friends, but they get that way, which leads to slap fights with bad guys and frequent bean eating. However, a formula is called that because it works, and these movies make me happy as I can be—just joyous, singing along to the music and happy that I live in a world where they were filmed.

This was directed and written by E.B. Clutcher, who also made nearly every union of these two, directed The Unholy Four and shot movies like Django, Erik the Viking and Nightmare Castle. Yes, that’s the Americanized name of Enzo Barboni, the director of Trinity.

Meanwhile, in the middle of this comedy, Hill’s character becomes involved with an Asian family and works to help them as the criminals target them. Their daughter? Laura Gemser. Throw in some Oliver Onions soundtrack, and there’s no way I could love this more.

You can watch this on YouTube.

June 25: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Wings Hauser Tribute!

This movie is a dream.

Worth Keeter, moving up from the Earl Owensby studios, is directing.

Sybil Danning as vigilante ex-cop Ruger in a movie made to get away from her sex symbol status but just look at the cover of this with her holding a rifle and man, it’s just what 17-year-old me was afraid of, that there were girls out there that looked like Sybil Danning and someday I might have to talk to them. She also wrote and produced this effort, which happened when International Video Entertainment realized how well the Sybil Danning Adventure Video releases they made — she just hosted — did so well.

Gary Graver is shooting it.

Wings Hauser as Cavanaugh, a drug dealer who is, as all Wings Hauser bad guys must be, absolutely beyond evil and out of his mind. He’s also a painter in this. An insane painter.

A candidate for mayor of Los Angeles has been kidnapped and his wife nearly killed, saved only by Ruger shooting first at the criminals. The politician’s wealthy wife, Kelly Rhodes (Lenore Kasdorf, Rico’s mom!), doesn’t dig that Ruger lives in a filthy trailer like she’s Martin Riggs or something, but they quickly bond over, you know, hating drug-dealing scuzzbuckets and being hunted by that very same drug-selling villain.

The sad part is that Steve James was supposed to be in this, and then they even shot photos of Danning with him for Ruger: L.A. Bounty 2, but yeah, I still don’t want to admit that Steve James is dead. Danning kept pushing for this character, as Ruger was in the comic book Concrete Storm with James as Major Washington Lyons and another comic in 2015, too.

And this from Rock Paper Shotgun: “This could well be the single weirdest E3 announcement. 1980s action-movie “star” Sybil Danning is making a “cloud-based” action shooter. It’s called Ruger, and will be loosely based on the 1989 movie L.A. Bounty. The baffling press release states: “While it is still early in the development cycle, Ruger will be a highly stylized, almost comic book styled shooter. The story, written by Sybil, is being held close to the vest, but watching L.A. Bounty is sure to shed at least some light on what it’s all about. There is definitely room in the faux-retro market for more names than Tarantino and Rodriguez, and Sybil Danning certainly has the pedigree to be credible. Incredibly, the game and a Ruger film are being developed simultaneously.””

If I ever meet Jim Rossignol, who wrote that, we may discuss why he put star in quotes about Sybil Danning.

Ruger speaks 31 words in this entire movie, which also has Anthony Kiedis’ dad Blackie Dammit, Frank Doubleday — Romero from Escape from New York — and Robery Quarry in the cast.

Every fact about this movie is that Sybil didn’t dress sexy and was wearing high-waisted jeans. Have you seen Sybil Danning in 1989? She could dress like an aging U.S. Senator and be volcanic.

But yeah. Wings Hauser. He talks to God, he paints naked women, he builds death traps and kills everyone around him, friend, foe and bystander. They should put heat this movie in a spoon and shoot in my eye.

You can watch this on Tubi.

June 24: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Hong Kong Action!

A cop played by Jiu Mou (Lam Wai) wants to catch a criminal, Black Panther, played by this movie’s director, Dick Wei. It gets personal when the killer wipes out the cop’s family. When he finally corners the bad guy, instead of facing up to his punishment, the Triad member jumps to his death. That won’t stop our hero cop, who finds a Taoist priest and goes the whole way to Hell to get his revenge.

In Hell, you can shoot people, which is going to be great when all the people who thought they were following Jesus over the past few years but were in a cult that didn’t follow any of His teachings all die. It’s also awesome news for Jiu Mou, who is fighting ninjas, demons, Dracula and Black Panther, who is working for the Ghost King, a man who runs part of Hell. Also: Hell has a place where you can chill, drink beer and watch women dance.

At least Jiu Mou’s family all get umbrellas and can fly to heaven. Hell looks a lot like Earth, though, and there, everyone has the same problems they had up above. Sounds like Hell, right?

June 23: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is New World Pictures!

Leon Isaac Kennedy is a hero in these parts, and wow, I only thought he made magic like in the movies Body and Soul and the Penitentiary. He wrote this movie, which was produced by Miami Gold, the company owned by Michael Franzese Sr., allegedly a caporegime in the New York City Colombo crime family and son of former underboss Sonny Franzese. The “Yuppie Don” was making $8 million a week when he was sent to jail and has since become a born-again motivational speaker. But for some time, he was partnering with Russian organized crime in a tax scam that allowed the combined criminal group to supply “between one-third and one-half of all gasoline sold in the New York metropolitan area,” and kept 75% of the profit.

Kennedy plays Troy, the leader of The Royals, a street gang who is branching out into being a band, even if Joey (Nicholas Campbell, who was in The Brood and played The Hitchhiker on HBO decades before he got weird and old and dropped racist words on the crew while working on the CBC series Coroner) disagrees. Plus, they have The Mechanics gang taking over their territory and corrupt police officer McGruder (Floyd Levine) ruining everything they try to accomplish. As you can figure, McGruder has sold out to the other gang and jails our protagonists, only for them to meet Twilight Records owner Mr. Delamo (Michael Ansara) behind bars. He believes in them, but his daughter, Brooke (Janine Turner), runs the company. But she soon falls for Troy, which you can imagine thrills her pop.

Can they thrill talent show judges Jeff Kutash and Smokey Robinson? Will they meet Kurtis Blow and the Fat Boys in prison? Will you hear Shannon’s “Let the Music Play” more than once? And what if Breakin’ and The Warriors made a baby? What if that baby was kind of stupid, but you loved it anyway? And why can’t a 37-year-old, Too Sweet, play the leader of a teenage gang? And you know how they made the reverse color Michael Jackson Thriller jacket, and you always wondered, “Who would wear the black and red Michael Jackson jacket that Hills has tons of when the red and black is sold out?” Leon Isaac Kennedy, that’s who.

This has bad guys who live in a tugboat. A dance training sequence. Denny Terrio of Dance Fever. All directed by the man who made music videos for Barlin’s “The Metro,” “Up the Creek” by Cheap Trick, “If You Don’t Want Me” by 1985 Norman Nardini & The Tigers (Pittsburgh represent) and several Celine Dion efforts, Dominic Orlando. This looks like a Filmirage movie — yes, I watched it in Italian, which helped — and has some great-looking scenes in it, because Rolf Kestermann was the DP. He also shot Disorderlies, Surf Nazis Must Die and the videos for Chris Issak’s “Wicked Game” and The Coupe de Villes’ “Big Trouble in Little China.” He also directed Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” video!

Anyways — this is the gift that keeps giving. The balls on this movie! Sammy Davis Jr. was in a scene, and they cut it. Who does that?