EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

Also known as Any Which Way You Punch, Duel Under the Burning Sun and Dragon Connection, this stars Angela Ma as a kind of Zorro character, as she’s the daughter of a Warlord Tung and also the masked vigilante Violet. And like so many Hong Kong movies imported to America, this liberally steals the score of Star Wars.

This is set in the 1920s, as warlords like Ma’s father are trying to take their own pieces of the country and gain power. She keeps taking the firing pins from all of his weapons while he has no idea that his daughter is his enemy.

She soon joins with the mysterious Pai Tien Hsing (Peng Tien) as one of her father’s men (Yi Chang) is trying to go into business for himself. He has some poison knives that really create some disgusting kills.

You also get Lo Lieh and Tan Tao-liang as two escaped criminals who work alongside our heroes, even getting caught inside a room that has moving spikes at one point.

In Germany, this was released as Der Gorilla mit der Stählernen Klaue (The Gorilla With the Steel Claw). This does not happen in the movie I watched but I wish that it had.

When 21st Century released it, they called it The Bruce Lee Connection. They also licensed it to Continental Video as Dragon Lady Ninja.

You can watch this on Tubi.

September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on September 27 and 28, 2024. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, September 27 are The Raven, The Terror, The Little Shop of Horrors and Attack of the Crab Monsters. Saturday, September 28 has The Beyond, Opera, Cemetery Man and A Blade In the Dark.

Known in Italy as La Casa con la Scala nel Buio (The House with the Dark Staircase), Lamberto Bava’s A Blade in the Dark was originally intended to be a four-part TV mini-series, with each segment ending with a murder. However, it was too gory for regular audiences, so it was released as a film. It was written by the husband and wife team of Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Briganti, whose script was often at odds with what Bava wanted to put in his film.

Bruno (Andrea Occhipinti, The New York Ripper) is a composer hired to create the soundtrack for a horror movie. He’s been having trouble concentrating on the job, so he rents a house to sequester himself. He meets two women who used to know his rented villa’s former tenant, but when they disappear, he’s forced to watch the movie he’s scoring closer, as there’s a clue to the razor-wielding killer’s identity hidden within.

Bava worked as Dario Argento’s assistant for the movie Tenebre two years before this movie was made, so that has a big influence on this work. This is a movie unafraid to wallow in gore, feeling closer to the American slasher than the giallo. Then again, Lamberto was an assistant on the movie that predates the slasher, his father’s A Bay of Blood.

For the killer, he had difficulty finding someone who could convincingly appear to be a man and a woman. He turned to his assistant, Michele Soavi, who went on to direct plenty of great horror on his own.

For those that care about these matters like me — Giovanni Frezza, forever Bob from The House by the Cemetery — shows up in the movie within a movie that Bruno is writing the music to. He’s taunted by voices that chant “You are a female! You are a female!”

Also, in the true spirit of giallo and what the word means, every victim — and then the killer him or herself — is called out by the color yellow.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

How did American audiences react to this Italian commedia sexy all’italiana?

Well, it does have Dayle Haddon in it. Today, she’s known for ads where she sells anti-aging products for L’Oréal, but at one point, she almost played Dale in Flash Gordon and was Spermula. She was also nude in the April 1973 issue of Playboy, as the American poster reminds us.

For Italian film lovers, this is where singer Carmen Villani first started her sex comedy roles. She’s in this with Carlo Giuffré, Gisela Hahn (Mr. Scarface) and Gloria Piedimonte, who released the space disco song “Ping Pong Space.”

If you look carefully at the students, you’ll see Ilona Staller, who would soon become Cicciolina.

Replacing a science teacher who has died of a heart attack, the young and provocative substitute teacher Loredana Cataluzzi (Villani) has arrived to make every boy in the school instantly complete puberty. One of her students, Stefano Baldesi (Eligio Zamara), wants her so bad that he becomes a fool any time he’s near her. Her sister Sonia (Haddon) feels badly for the boy, so she gives herself freely to him. This angers Loredana, who misses the affections of Stefano.

Director Guido Leoni wrote the dialogue for Death Walks At Midnight and Four Times That Night. This was nearly charged with obscenity, as Roman officials wanted the director, producers and actors to go to jail for 2 months. As late as 1985, nearly four minutes of footage was cut — ten years after it first was released.

If you haven’t seen an Italian sex comedy, well, it has men losing their minds just looking at the women. You may or may not enjoy it. Think Porky’s with a bigger budget and more Eurosleaze women, which is a compliment. There’s also a sequel, La supplente va in città.

This was released by 21st Century as Substitute Teacher.

September Drive-In Super Monster-Rama is back at The Riverside Drive-In Theatre in Vandergrift, PA on September 27 and 28, 2024. Admission is still only $15 per person each night (children 12 and under free with adult) and overnight camping is available (breakfast included) for an additional $15 per person. You can buy tickets at the show but get there early and learn more here.

The features for Friday, September 27 are The Raven, The Terror, The Little Shop of Horrors and Attack of the Crab Monsters. Saturday, September 28 has The Beyond, Opera, Cemetery Man and A Blade In the Dark.

Throughout the 1990’s, Michele Soavi kept the traditions of Italian horror alive. Starting as an actor in films like Aliens 2: On Earth, City of the Living Dead, Demons and The New York Ripper, Soavi would also become an assistant director to greats such as Dario Argento (Tenebre, Phenomena), Lamberto Bava (Blastfighter and the previously mentioned Demons) and Terry Gilliam (The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and The Brothers Grimm). Finally, he’d graduate to creating his own films, including Stagefright, The Sect and The Church.

Cemetary Man is based on Tiziano Sclavi’s novel Dellamorte Dellamore (the best translation is “About Death, About Love”). Sclavi also created the comic book Dylan Dog, whose protagonist looks exactly like this film’s star Rupert Everett (and which was also made into a 2011 film).

Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett, My Best Friend’s Wedding) takes care of the Buffalora cemetery. He lives in a shack, with death and his mentally challenged assistant Gnaghi his only friends. Quite frankly, his life sucks. Young punks in town tell everyone he’s impotent. And his only hobbies are putting together a skull-shaped puzzle and crossing out dead people’s names in the telephone book.

That said, he has a hell of a job to do. The gates of the cemetery read “For those who will rise again,” and after a week, the dead rises from their graves, ready to kill the living. Francesco must kill them when they rise, even if no one wants to hear what a problem he’s facing. Again, the townspeople think he’s a moron, the mayor doesn’t care and, according to Franco, the town’s bookkeeper, he’d have to do a ton of paperwork if he really wanted the help.

While watching a funeral, Dellamorte falls in love with a widow. He waits for her to visit the graveside of her dead husband, then takes her on a tour of the grounds. As they have sex on the graves, her dead spouse rises and fatally bites her. Or maybe it’s a heart attack. Or maybe she isn’t even dead.  That said, seven days later, she also rises from the dead and Dellamorte must put her down as well.

Meanwhile, Gnaghi falls in love with the mayor’s daughter, Valentina. Even when she’s decapitated, he won’t fall out of love, instead digging up her head and starting up a romance. And the widow rises again, leading Dellamorte to believe that he was the one who killed her, not her husband. This causes him to either go insane or to begin seeing the truth, as the Angel of Death appears to him, begging him to stop killing the dead and only kill the living.

The widow has become the unattainable object of Dellamorte’s desire. He even tries to talk a doctor into removing his penis so that one aspect of her, the assistant to the new mayor (oh yeah, Valentina killed her dad when he shunned her new relationship) who is afraid of penetration, will fall in love with him. That relationship ends when she is raped, loses her phobia and marries her attacker.

Dellamorte then goes into town and kills anyone who said he was impotent. Meeting a prostitute in a bar, he realizes that she is also his unattainable love. He kills her and everyone in her apartment by setting it on fire.

Remember that bookkeeper, Franco? Well, he’s killed his whole family and the other murders that Dellamorte has done are all pinned on him. He drinks iodine to kill himself, but before he dies, Dellamorte visits. While visiting, he kills a nun, a nurse and a doctor, finally trying to confess to everything but no one will believe him.

Death reveals himself again and laughs that Dellamorte has not figured out what the difference between life and death is. So our hero packs up the car, grabs Gnaghi and tries to escape the town. As they race out of a tunnel, their car wrecks and Gnaghi is critically injured.

Dellamorte fears that the rest of the world has ceased to exist. He decides to kill himself and Gnaghi before his assistant is miraculously healed. He throws Dellamorte’s gun off a cliff and the two men decide to go back home.

If you’re looking for a narrative film that makes sense, this is not the movie. If you’re seeking a dream meditation of life, love and loss, then fire up your DVD player. Or streaming device, it is 2017 after all. Shot in a real abandoned cemetery, there are moments of poetic beauty and grace, like when the floating fool’s fire lights dance around the graves as Dellamorte and She make love. And there are also moments of abject horror and dread, as the film has an incredibly memorable personification of death.

Soavi would drop out of filmmaking to take care of his sick son in the late 1990’s, returning to work in television in the early 2000’s. Here’s hoping that he gets another chance to return to features, as Cemetery Man is everything I love about film — strangeness that is not easily accessible or categorized.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

The world ended in a nuclear war that happened in 1989.

The Fabers — Ben (Gary Lockwood), Lucy (Camilla Spav) and Rachel (Zoli Marki) have been isolated from the end times, as they work their farm and just concentrate on the harvest. They lose all that when Bigman (Ian Steadman) and his cannibal motorcycle gang attack, but thanks to their knowledge of guns, as well as the mysterious stranger named Adam Strong (Morgan Stevens) who has been living with them, they get it all back.

Director and writer Percival Rubens also made The Demon, which is so much better than this. This is a rare boring after the bomb movie. Where is the facepaint? Where are the crossbows? Where are the cool cars?

Gary Lockwood made a career of playing doomed astronauts, like Frank Poole in 2001 and Gary Mitchell on the Star Trek episode “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”

Nothing in this movie feels like it’s post-apocalyptic. The farm family drinks tea and have family nights while the rest of the world is dead. It’s hard to be on their side.

Originally released by Commedia Pictures in 1983 and also known as Haunted Planet, this was re-released by 21st Century.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: As the journey through Cannon continues, this week we’re exploring the films of 21st Century Film Corporation, which would be the company that Menahem Golan would take over after Cannon. Formed by Tom Ward and Art Schweitzer in 1971 (or 1976, there are some disputed expert opinions), 21st Century had a great logo and released some wild stuff.

When you see Dick Randall’s name on a movie, you are going to get sleaze.

Directed by Conrad Brueghel, who is really Italian actor Giovanni Brusadori, who wrote the script with Bruno Fontana and George Eastman — speaking of sleazy — this starts with some young tennis players on their way to a meet when they come across four escaped female convicts — Marina (Lilli Carati, L’alcova), Betty (Artemia Terenziani), Diana (Marina Daunia) and Erica (Ada Pometti) — who have already shot their own bus driver, Pierre. As Marco (Francesco Ferracini), the bus driver for the tennis team, lets them on the bus, they soon discover that these are the escaped killers and a terrorist!

One of the girls, Terry (Ines Pellegrini, Giorni damore sul fil de una Lama), knows a place they can hide out, the home of a judge (Filippo De Gara). It’s a gigantic place and soon, the girls are assaulting each of the men — and women — as well as forcing the judge to wet himself. Anna (Zora Kerova, The New York Ripper) seems to be the only tennis player that doesn’t freak out — like Claudine (Dirce Funari) — or join the enemy, as Terry does. Terry even pistol whips her and nearly shoots her, but can’t bring herself to kill someone.

This movie goes through some wild changes, like the judge becoming one of the bad guys as he assaults Monica, the other three girls trying to shoot their way out instead of going to jail, case after case of J&B, tennis girls getting drunk while being abused and facing death by cop outside and no one really getting out of this alive because the cops somehow are even worse than everyone, even the Communist terrorist who finally gets to explain her point of view and mellows out, instead of being the final boss.

This isn’t really a women in prison movie, but a warden does get shot in the head, so it gets the end of the WIP story correct.

The end credits say, “In spite of the evident close correspondence with day reality, the facts, events and characters are completely fictitious. The director thanks co-workers, technicians, crew, actors and all those who cooperated with enthusiasm and dedicated themselves in the best tradition of cooperatives, making the production of this film possible.” That’s because this was based on a true story.

21st Century licensed this to Continental Video, where it lost ten minutes so it could be on a double feature tape with Sweet Sugar.

You can get this from Severin, who promise a “new 4k scan of a dupe negative seized from notorious NYC distributor 21st Century Film Corp.”