Armando Crispino really only did two horror films, 1972’s The Dead Are Alive and this 1975 giallo, which is a shame, as this is a pretty decent entry in the genre. Known in Italy as Macchie Solari (Sunspots), it does indeed feature sunspot footage from space before we see any major murders. And if you’re looking for a movie packed with autopsy footage, good news. It totally lives up to its title.

Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer, who is also in Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Perfume of the Lady in Black; I am legally and ethically forced to remind you that she is a perfect angel somehow on Earth, a fragile flower of magic and splendor) is a pathology student who is trying to work on a theory about suicides, one that’s disputed by a young priest, Father Paul, whose sister — Simona’s dad’s latest fling — has recently killed herself. It turns out there’s been a whole series of self-killings which are being blamed on, you guessed it, sunspots.

I mean, what can you say about a movie that starts with several of said suicides, like sliced wrists, a self-induced car explosion and a man machine gunning his kids before turning the gun on himself? Obviously, this is a rather grisly affair, with real corpse photos spread — quite literally — throughout the film.

In between all of the gore, corpse penises, two bodies falling to their deaths and crime museums, there’s also Ray Lovelock (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) as Simona’s boyfriend, an out there Morricone score and a heroine who hallucinates that the dead are coming back to life.

The plot gets pretty convoluted, but if you’re on this site, you obviously appreciate films like this and will get past it. This is an Italian 70’s murder movie, though, so if you get easily upset about the way men behave, well, be forewarned.

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 will be 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 mention it. 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.

The first time I saw The Apple, I was in the throes of losing my job, starting a new company and feeling lost. This movie not only made me feel like I could go on but also inspired me to start writing more about films and why they mattered to me.

You know how everyone thinks Cannon put out some completely crazy movies? If you haven’t seen The Apple (also known as Star Rock), you haven’t seen their full power. Directed by Menahem Golan, this slice of sheer madness is a movie I use to test the resolve of anyone brave enough to watch movies with me.

The genesis of this film begins in 1975. Israeli rock producer Coby Recht was signed to Barclay Records and began to feel distrustful of show business. He worked this into a story with his wife, Iris Yotvat, and brought it to the attention of his longtime friend Menahem. After hearing the demos for the song, the producer/director instructed Recht to go to Los Angeles immediately. They were making the movie.

Yotvat said, “That was marvelous. That was just fantastic to think that it was going to be a movie all of a sudden. It was just amazing.”

It wasn’t going to stay that way.

Recht and Yotvat lived in a villa that Menahem provided, writing six screenplay drafts in three weeks. As those drafts progressed, the story became more comical and less Orwellian. Soon, things were getting corny, out of touch and out of date. If you’ve seen any of the movies that Golan was involved in, you can see how that might be true.

After auditioning thousands of hopefuls, Recht settled on Catherine Marie Stoutdatedhe lead role of Bibi. Who is a singer. Not a dancer, like Stewart. He figured she could learn, but the producers decided to have her voice dubbed.

Tensions only got worse once filming began, as what started as a $4 million movie turned into $10 million and then more. Editor Alain Jakubowicz claimed that Golan shot around a million feet of footage, with six cameras covering every dance number, up to a four-hour rough cut.

The movie got way bigger than its scriptwriters intended. Shooting in West Berlin lasted forever, with a five-day covering opening number, the song “Speed” being filmed at the Metropol nightclub (which held the world record for the biggest indoor laser show), and some scenes were actually shot inside a gas chamber that had killed people during World War II.

Nigel Lythgoe, who later was a big part of American Idol, choreographed the film, saying that some days were “really, really depressing” and others “very, very stressful.” The cast and crew hated the script, but here they were, making the film.

Menahem and Recht’s battles soon got worse. The writer felt he should be in London mixing the songs (the sessions had more than 200 artists involved), but Menahem demanded that he show up at the shoot. The first day he was there, he witnessed the uncut version “Paradise Day” which featured fifteen dinosaurs and a tiger that broke free and escaped. This scene also contained elephants getting their trunks stuck in the set, actors collapsing while wearing a t,oo hot brontosaurus costume and a set that made it near impossible for people to dance on and cameras to move around. Removing this scene makes the Biblical end of the movie come out of nowhere. That’s right. None of this is in the film.

nearlyerine Marie Stewart has stated that nonfor e of this rattled Menahem. In fact, he was convinced that The Apple was going to be embraced: “Menahem was very passionate about what he was doing. He had very lofty ideas about the project. He thought this was going to break him into the American film industry. It had, you know, all the elements that he thought were necessary at that time. It was the early eighties and there were a lot of musicals. And Menahe,m thought that was his ticket into the American film industry.”

So what happened?

The plot is basically Adam and Eve meets Faust. Bibi (Stewart) and Alphie (Georgmeetmour) are contestants in the 1994 Worldvision Song Festival. They’re talented but easily defeated by the machinations of Mr. Boogalow (Vladek Sheybal, Kronsteen in From Russian With Love) and BIM (Boogalow International Music).

The evil leader soon signs the duo but they soon fall victim to the darkness of show business. Bibi is caught up in the drugs and sex and glamour, while Alphie is beaten by cops and nearly dies to save her. He also lives with a woman who is either his mother, lover, or landlady, and no one ever explains to us.

Eventually, they escape and live as hippies, having a child. Mr. Boogalow finds them and claims that Bibi owes him $10 million, but soon God, known here as Mr. Topps (Joss Ackland, The House That Dripped Blood, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey), takes them away in his Rolls-Royce and the Rapture occurs.

There are numerous scenes where people put stickers, called BIM Marks, all over their faces. Everyone has camel toe. And the movie is nearly 100% disco.

The movie premiered at the 1980 Montreal World Film Festival. To say it did not go well is an understatement.

Attendees hated the film so much that they launched giveaway records of the soundtrack at the screen. Menahem was so devastated that he almost jumped off his hotel balcony before being saved by his business partner, Yoram Globus. A similar scene happened at the film’s second premiere at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood.

The director said, “It’s impossible that I’m so wrong about it. I cannot be that wrong about the movie. They just don’t understand what I was trying to do.”

I get it, Menahem. You were just trying to get people to understand the power of love and music and being hippies a full decade after any of that mattered. You didn’t care if anyone else got it. You had a vision. And we’re not talking about any of those critics today. No, we’re talking about you. We’re talking about The Apple.

This is a movie that wears its heart messily all over its spandex crotch. The songs are ridiculous. The dancing is, at times, poor. The story makes no sense at all. You’re lucky to sit and witness it. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve watched it!

BONUS! You can hear Becca and me talk all about The Apple on our podcast.

Also known as Five Savage Men, this starts with everyone on a stagecoach being killed, other than schoolteacher Alice McAndrew (Michele Carey, The Choirboys), who is assaulted and left for dead by Pudge Elliot (Keenan Wynn) and his henchmen, who include Peyote (Joe Turkel, not tending bar for Jack Nicholson) and Jamie (Pepper Martin). I mean, they crucify her to the ground in the desert before they do it and I get it, it’s a revengeomatic, but in the ways of Michael Winner — this was directed by Ron Joy and written by Richard Bakalyan — that assault goes on so long that we begin to feel complicit in it.

After they depart, Native American Chatto (Henry Silva, who was Sicilian and Spanish) rescues her — why didn’t he jump in sooner? — and not only brings her back to health, he also teaches her how to kill and becomes her lover, which seems kind of odd, but what do I know?

The law, led by Sheriff Allan Pierce (John Anderson), thinks Chatto is behind all of this. You can see where that is going. What you won’t expect is an acid rock soundtrack by Rupert Holmes, who had two hit songs about cheating, “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and “Him.” I never knew that he created the AMC series Remember WENN.

You can watch this on Tubi.

John Pressman (Michael Lerner) is a barely controlled diabetic who works for an eye doctor but is also going blind. And his mother, Alice (Zelda Rubinstein), is controlling him, making him kill people for their eyes. One night, he decides to escape from his mother and hide in a theater that’s showing The Lost World, killing people one by one until the cops arrive with his mother as a hostage negotiation tactic. Except she gets shot and he gets arrested. Cue the credits.

Maybe not.

Because The Mother is the movie playing at The Rex, it’s disturbing everyone who views it. There’s even one man who keeps coming back and has decided to kill people in perfect union with the movie. Even as the police arrive in The Mother, they are showing up in Anguish, but the movie never ends. Even with the death of the killing machine, John Pressman shows up in one of the survivor’s minds and he wants her eyes.

Maybe not.

Because this is another movie in a movie.

Bigas Luna seems like he’s directing a slasher, pulling every rug out from under you, and dropping the floor and the earth under you. Originally, Bette Davis was asked to be The Mother in this and wow, except that Rubinstein is beyond exceptional. Also, it starts with this disclaimer: “During the film you are about to see, you will be subject to subliminal messages and mild hypnosis. This will cause you no physical harm or lasting effect, but if for any reason you lose control or feel that your mind is leaving your body — leave the auditorium immediately.””

The purest movie drugs.

Bruce Kessler had a wild life. A race car driver, the last person to speak to James Dean, a survivor of a racing crash that put him into a coma, a world-class skeet and trap shooter, and the director of tons of TV shows and movies (Cruise Into Terror, Deathmoon) and movies (Simon King of the Witches, Killers Three, The Gay Deceivers), he led what we call a life.

Mike (Tom Stern) comes back from ‘Nam and back to leading his gang, the Madcaps. Unlike many of these biker movies, the main cop — Bingham (Jack Starrett) — is actually sympathetic to the motorcyclists.

But as great as the title is and as cool as biker movies can be—often hiring real gang members and having them do stunts—this just can’t decide whether the bikers should be heroic or scumbags, and it can’t have it both ways.

At least it has Arlene Martel in the cast. She was also Spock’s would-be wife, T’Pring, in the “Amok Time” episode. She also played a character named Adultress 58 in Battlestar Galactica, and if that’s not a great band name, I have no idea what is. She also shows up in Dracula’s Dog, Bunny Yeager’s Nude Camera and Chatterbox! And if you were a ’90s hipster, you should know Von Dutch did the opening titles and murals.

Alvin Purple (Graeme Blundell) is a door-to-door waterbed salesman — if we’ve learned anything from cinema, it’s that “The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed, at the same time.” — who is irresistible to women.

Somehow, this was made by director Tim Burstall, who was part of the new wave La Mama Theatre in Melbourne, established by his wife Betty Burstall. His first movie,  2000 Weeks, was well-reviewed outside of Australia, but failed at home. Did he get cynical and just make movies that would make him money? Sure seems like it. When adjusted for inflation, this is the seventh biggest movie made in Australia and had two sequels, Alvin Rides Again and Melvin, Son of Alvin.

It was released over here as The Sex Therapist. 

Alvin somehow goes from sleeping around to seeing a therapist to a quack doctor who uses him to start a whorehouse and then make porn movies and then the one girl that he really loves becomes a nun, so he becomes a gardener.

You’re not watching it for the plot.

You can watch this on the Cave of Forgotten Films. 

Directed by William Diehl (who also directed The Secretary and wrote the novel that Sharky’s Machine is based on) and written by Raymond Marlowe Jr., All the Young Wives is also known as Naked Rider and You All Come.

Big Jim (Gerald Richards, billed as Jerry) runs the town and all the women, too. But his much younger wife Melody (Linda Cook, the voice of Leech Woman in Puppet Master) starts sleeping with Sam (Edmund Genest), one of his workers — and perhaps stealing his money — and he has to re-evaluate his life, which is mostly spent chucking his friends.

The posters and titles make this sound sleazy, but it isn’t. It’s a Southern Gothic take on bad marriages and women trying to come into their own when you expect wall-to-wall balling. You may not recognize a single actor in this, but you’ll be surprised by just how good everyone is.

You can get this from Dark Forces.

Joe (Joe Weldon) is the man who gets the girls for a Sunset Strip go-go club. He also gets those girls for his own pleasure, as he starts the movie by taking Colette (Mary Bauer, who may have been in Lady Godiva Rides, The Divorcee and Street of a Thousand Pleasures but was also a production assistant on Sesame Street) back home for some clumsy sixties exploitation movie aardvarking.

There’s also Sandra and Billie, two ladies who do a BDSM routine that had to be volcanic back in 1968, but when voiced over today with “wow, look how out there these chicks” are VO and some amazing fuzz guitar, it’s kind of quaint. Then the ladies go home and get a vibrator that is so unsexual that in no way can you be turned on by. It looks like…man, I don’t even know. It looks like something you’d buy at Home Depot.

The girls decide to skip work the next day, which means that Joe has to bring in a new lady: Cindy (Pat Barrington), who tends the bar. If you didn’t guess by the fact that Pat Barrington is playing Cindy, well, in little time she’s the most popular dancer there is. Barrington is the queen of movies like this, as well as a life that Ashley West of The Rialto Report said was “a wild tale of sexploitation films, a serial killer, go-go dancing, sexual assault, Hollywood, nude modeling, Sam Fuller, Lenny Bruce, Robert Mitchum, and much more.” Barrinton was also the gold girl in Orgy of the Dead and shows up in The Satanist, Mantis In Lace and Sisters In Leather.

Anyways, the rest of the girls get upset and try to forcibly make her a daughter of Sappho, which leads to the police arriving and the end of the gravy train for Joe.

Director Zoltan G. Spencer also made seven other movies: The Hand of Pleasure, Danish & Blue, The Screentest Girls, Sisters In Leather, Tropic of Scorpio, The Satanist and Terror At Orgy Castle. He’s the voice of Joe in this and sounds world-weary. Joseph A. Ziemba from AGFA said that he was “a mysterious sex-horror sorcerer who created happy un-worlds that writhed with sexual chaos, shabby sets, and baffling tangents.” I want to thank him for being part of my favorite genre: the sex movie that doesn’t have any intention of turning you on.

You can watch this on Cultpix.