EDITOR’S NOTE: The Fury was on the CBS Late Movie on September 6, 1985.

Roger Ebert said of this movie, “I’m not quite sure it makes a lot of sense, but that’s the sort of criticism you only make after it’s over. During the movie, too much else is happening.”

Ex-CIA agent Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) and his psychic son Robin (Andrew Stevens) meet up with Ben Childress (John Cassavetes), one of Peter’s old spy friends. Peter is leaving the life behind, but Ben is prepared. He stages a terrorist attack that nearly kills his supposed friend and takes his son away.

Across the world, student Gillian Bellaver (Amy Irving) learns that she has powers of her own. She can barely control them, so she goes to the Paragon Institute, a front for the same organization that Childress is running, one that kills parents and takes their psychic teens away to make them into weapons for the U.S. government. Thanks to having a girlfriend (Carrie Snodgress) on the inside, Peter starts to track down his son.

Gillian grows in power and soon meets Robin psychically. Childress determines that she knows too much, so he plans to eliminate her, while Peter plans on following her to find his son. Working with Dr. Susan Charles (Fiona Lewis, between this and Strange Behavior not someone I would trust with my teenage child), they have successfully transformed Robin into a killing machine. That said, he can’t be controlled and his abilities have already caused one mass homicide at a theme park.

As Peter and Gillian break into Childress’ mansion, Robin goes full-on mental and thinks that PSU wants to replace him with Gillian. He kills his handlers and even tries to murder his father, who tries to keep him from falling. When he responds by scratching Peter’s face and causing his own death. Seeing his son dead, the old agent decides life isn’t worth living and he kills himself.

As he lies dying, he gives Gillian all of his power, power she soon uses to cause Childress to bleed from the eyes and then to literally blow up. It’s one of the wildest stunts ever and one that took two tries. De Palma told The Talks, “I had 8 or 9 high-speed cameras and he explodes. He explodes. And the first time we did it, it didn’t work. The body parts didn’t go towards the right cameras and this whole set was covered with blood. And it took us almost a week to get back to do take two.”

How was this achieved? In the same interview, the director said, “Nobody had ever done this before. I had these incredible high-speed cameras that the astronauts use and about three of them jammed because they were going so fast. They were all shooting super, super slow-motion – this is in the ’70s – and then it’s all over and you look around and the set is completely in shambles.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Pumaman was on the CBS Late Movie on January 3 and July 9, 1985.

After Superman, the Italian film industry did what it always does best: figure out how to make their own versions of a film. However, the danger of making superhero movies is that. the special effects — particularly after Star Wars and Superman, which was sold on the idea of believing that a man can fly — had to be perfect.

Alberto De Martino knew that Italian trend quite well. When sword and sandal movies were big, he directed The Triumph of Hercules. He made Ringo and Django clones in the spaghetti western craze. And when James Bond got hot, he made several Special Agent 077 movies. Giallo? De Martino turned out the New Mexico-shot The Man with the Icy Eyes, the Telly Savalas-starring The Killer Is On the Phone and the Dirty Harry meets Italian psychosexual horror in Canada romp Strange Shadows In an Empty Room. As The Exorcist and The Omen got hot, the director answered with The Antichrist and Holocaust 2000.

But superheroes? Superheroes nearly broke the man.

In Roberto Curti’s book Diabolika: Supercriminals, Superheroes and the Comic Book Universe in Italian Cinema, De Martino was quite candid about the failure of this movie. The Pumaman “was a production based on the trend of the moment. I had always done it that way and always done well. But regarding this genre of film, there was the audience’s diffidence toward Italian movies featuring special effects. They knew we were not up to the task, and didn’t take us seriously.”

He’d go on to say that it was “the only pic I did wrong in my whole career. When I saw it was a flop, I started asking myself questions. I had made a film I shouldn’t have. However it did well abroad and managed to get the guaranteed minimum back, otherwise I’d have had to sell my house. It did not even gross half a billion lire in Italy.”

Pumaman was played by Walter George Alton, his only film role before he became a medical malpractice attorney in New York City. He’s the ancestor of ancient aliens that gave birth to the Aztecs and entrusted a guardian armed with a golden mask. Ah — superheroes, Erich Von Daniken and Italian cinema? Bellisimo!

The mask is discovered by archaeologist — and the daughter of a Dutch ambassador — named Jane Dobson (Sydne Rome, who grew up near Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio before heading out to Italy to make movies like Man Called Amen and Sergio Martino’s Sex With a Smile). She learns that it can control minds, which pleases her boss Dr. Kobras (Donald Pleasence!) who takes over her brains instantly and then decides to start a Herrod-like campaign to kill Pumaman before the reincarnated hero becomes a threat.

Pumaman ends up being American paleontologist Tony Farms, who learns of his powers after the Native American named Vadinho throws him out a window and he survives the experience. How many people did Vandinho toss before he met the real Pumaman?

Of course, Tony and Jane are destined to fall in love and make the Pumababy, as foretold when the aliens visit Stonehenge and take the golden mask back. Of course.

You can watch this on Tubi with riffing from Mystery Science Theater 3000. You’re going to need it, because the man who never said no to a role, Donald Pleasence, stated that this was the worst movie he did in his entire career. Just imagine the depths of that statement.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ator 2: The Blade Master was on the CBS Late Movie on August 5, 1986 and April 12, 1985.

Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to be in the movie, the actor said that he couldn’t be in the film due to moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.

Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X – Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules – A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus ) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman empire.

This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.

Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer) to find his student Ator (O’Keefe).

Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall of my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.

Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.

After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.

Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that.

If you want to see this with riffing, it’s called The Cave Dwellers in its Mystery Science Theater 3000 form. But man, a movie like this doesn’t really even need people talking over it. It was shot with no script in order to compete with Conan the Destroyer. How awesome is that?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Ator the Fighting Eagle was on the CBS Late Movie on April 12 and July 19, 1985. I am amazed that this was on national U.S. television.

Let’s list the reasons why this movie made it to our site:

Joe D’Amato directed it. Where do we even start with his filmography? Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals? Antropophagus? Endgame?

It’s an Italian ripoff of Conan the Barbarian, which means it’s going to be at the same time better, worse and more inventive than the movie that inspired it.

It’s written by Michele Soavi (Stagefright, The Church, The Sect, Cemetery Man)!

Once, Ator was just a baby, born with the birthmark that prophesied that he’d grow up to destroy the Spider Cult, whose leader Dakar (a pro wrestler who appeared in Titanes en el Ring against Martín Karadagian) tries to kill before he even gets out of his chainmail diapers.

Luckily, Ator is saved and grows up big, strong and weirdly in love with his sister, Sunya. It turns out that luckily, he’s adopted, so this is only morally and not biologically upsetting. His father allows them to be married, but the Spider Cult attacks the village and takes her, along with several other women.

Ator trains with Griba, the warrior who saved him as a child (he’s played by Edmund Purdom, the dean from Pieces!). What follows are pure shenanigans — Ator is kidnapped by Amazons, almost sleeps with a witch, undertakes a quest to find a shield and meets up with Roon (Sabrina Siani, Ocron from Fulci’s batshit barbarian opus Conquest), a sexy blonde thief who is in love with him.

Oh yeah! Laura Gemser, Black Emanuelle herself, shows up here too.

Ator succeeds in defeating Dakkar, only to learn that the only reason that Griba mentored him was to use him to destroy his enemy. That said, Ator defeats him too, leaving him to be eaten by the Lovecraftian-named Ancient One, a monstrous spider. But hey, Ator isn’t done yet. He kills that beast too!

Finally, learning that Roon has died, Ator and Sunya go back to their village, ready to make their incestual union a reality. Or maybe not, as she doesn’t show up in the three sequels, The Blade Master, Iron Warrior and Quest for the Magic Sword.

Ator is played by Miles O’Keefe, who started his Hollywood career in the Bo Derek vehicle Tarzan the Ape Man, a movie that Richard Harris would nearly fist fight people over if they dared to bring it up. He’s in all but the last of these films and while D’Amato praised his physique and attitude, he felt that his fighting and acting skills left something to be desired.

Ator the Fighting Eagle pretty much flies by. It does what it’s supposed to do — present magic, boobs, sorcery and swordfights — albeit in a PG-rated film.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Betsy was on the CBS Late Movie on September 15, 1982.

Based on the Harold Robbins book, directed by Daniel Petrie (Bronco and Billie, Six Pack, Fort Apache the Bronx) and written by William Bast and Walter Bernstein, this is the story of Loren Hardeman Sr. (Laurence Olivier) and the car that will bring his company back to glory, named for his great-granddaughter (Kathleen Beller). This goes against what his grandson (Robert Duvall) thinks the company’s future is. It’s also about the loves of race driver Angelo Perino (Tommy Lee Jones) and a special fuel that will power The Betsy.

In The Golden Turkey Awards, Harry and Michael Medved said of this movie: “Another Harold Robbins book bites the dust as a wretched, melodramatic film. Lord Laurence Olivier’s attempt at a Texas twang is a hilarious flop, as is his incestuous relationship with his daughter-in-law, Katharine Ross.”

Jokes on you, Medveds, that’s just cucking your son, not incest. It’s also a scene where the homosexual son of the elder Loren shoots himself in the head while the young version of the grandson Loren watches, then goes upstairs to tell his mom, who has grandpa between her thighs.

That’s Harold Robbins, right?

Well, in the world of this movie, it’s an actual choice between Kathleen Beller and Lesley-Anne Down. Come on, Tommy Lee Jones!