EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

You know how I always say that these Eurospy movies are like the UN? How about this one, which is an Israeli/German/Italian movie co-directed by Gianfranco Baldanello (Danger!! Death Ray) and one of my favorite insane people, Menahem Golan — the man who would soon enough direct the magnum opus The Apple.

Who would star, some would wonder? Fabio Testi from One Damned Day at Dawn… Django Meets Sartana! and Fulci’s The Four of the Apocalypse and Contraband. Oh yes.

The love interest? Janet Agren from City of the Living Dead! Oh man!

That’s most of the excitement of the film, which promises a Bond-like experience from its poster and description and does not deliver, except for an incredible boat chase in Amsterdam. You can tell Golan was excited about the action scenes and not so much anything else. But hey! The soundtrack by Coriolano Gori (The Legend of Wolf Woman) and Dov Seltzer (Night Terrors) is pretty good. Cannon Bros will also rejoice to see the face of Yehuda Efroni. If you know, as they say, you know.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

I had no idea that this Italian Western was an Israeli co-production and just a few years before they’d make it to the USA, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus would work with The Irwin Yablans Company and Cannon Film Distributors to bring this movie to screens all over the world.

Sam Clayton (Jack Palance, as always, a grinning force of complete menace) and his gang have taken over Juno City, stabbing men and assaulting women before leaving the town in the bloody dust. No man will ride out to stop them, except Father John (Lee Van Cleef), a holy man who rides out unarmed and takes the guilty gang members to jail.

The gang breaks them out of jail and kills the priest, sending a young boy named Johnny (Leif Garrett!) to Mexico to bring Lewis, the twin brother of the dead man of the cloth, and he comes back with vengeance on his mind, even if it turns out that Clayton ends up being Johnny’s father.

Also known as Diamante Lobo and A Bullet From God, this is Lee Van Cleef’s last filmed Western (and second movie with Garrett). It was a rough film for Richard Boone, who had started having health problems, then got drunk and walked off the set, leaving the Israeli location before he even dubbed his dialogue. He’d say in an interview, “I’m starring in the worst picture ever made. The producer is an Israeli and the director is Italian, and they don’t speak. Fortunately it doesn’t matter, because the director is deaf in both ears.”

That deaf director was Gianfranco Parolini, better known in America as Frank Kramer, and the maker of some wild stuff like Sabata; Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century; Kiss Kiss, Kill Kill; The Three Fantastic Supermen and writing If You Meet Sartana… Pray for Your Death. It was written by John Fonseca, whose career is all over the place, acting in The Uranium Conspiracy (also produced by Golan), serving as a dialogue coach and even shooting stills on the sets of Don’t Open Till Christmas and Slaughter High.

How did I get this far without telling you Sybil Danning is in this movie? Am I slipping?

This may not be the best Italian Western you’ve ever seen, but honestly, the end with Palance rambling in a cemetery and alternating between being paternal and horrifying, well, that’s worth the price of this blu ray. And Lee Van Cleef? Always just right.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

Golan and Globus also produced a Western, God’s Gun, starring Leif Garrett and Lee Van Cleef in which Garrett was mentored by Cleef. The producers paid Garrett to stay in Israel for two months until filming began on that movie, which was released before this.

Kid Vengeance stars both of them but in totally different roles, as Garrett is Tom, who watched Van Cleef’s McClain murder most of his immediate family, getting gang member Jesus (John Marley) to shoot dad (David Loden), before he rapes and murders mom (Dalia Penn) and kidnaps sister Lisa (Glynnis O’Connor). Once he comes out of hiding, Tom makes his way across the plains and like some tween slasher antagonist, he kills them all off, one by one, by arrow, by scorpion, by snake, bye bye.

Instead of Gianfranco Parolini, this was directed by Joseph Manduke, who made the TV movie Beatlemania and Omega Syndrome. It was written by Ken Globus, who also wrote the Golan/Globus movies Operation Thunderbolt and Lupo! and was on second unit for their films The Highway Queen, The Passover Plot and Kazablan. He was joined by writers Bud Robbins and James Telfer.

Isaac (Jim Brown) helps Tom learn how to be a man, but if you’re hoping for a Jim Brown heroic role, this isn’t it. This is not a sequel to Take a Hard Ride, despite what you may have heard. Maybe watch that instead.

You can watch this on Tubi.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Over the next several days, I’ll be covering movies either directed by Menahem Golan or produced by Golan and Globus before they bought Cannon.

Directed by Menahem Golan, who wrote the script with Joseph and Yosef Gross (The Magician) with Yorum Globus producing, Ha-Pritza Hagdola is the story of Israel at war with Egypt — although never said — and the POWs of the El Muzzir prison, which is lorded over by the brutal Major Heikal (Joseph Shiloach).

Five Israeli commandos are being kept there and despite the UN attempting to see if they are being treated in accordance to the Geneva Convention, After trying to break the men with firing squad fakeouts where he ties them up, blindfolds them and repeatedly plays gun noises over a loudspeaker, one of them, Eli (Yehoram Gaon) gets away and back to Israel. He’s angry that no one is doing anything to save his fellow men. He steals an ambulance and goes to speak with his former leader Beno (Rick Jason). He agrees to get together some of his other retired commandos and rescue the men.

While all this is going on, Life Magazine reporter Abe Koleman (Peter Brown) is buttering up to Heikal and planning an article that will show the improve side of Egypt and how they treat prisoners. It turns out that some of the guards are on the side of Israel and have given Koleman photos of abuses which he uses to get the interview and into the prison itself. Of course, he’s on the side of the commandos and before you can say The Delta Force, grenades and bullets and bodies are flying all over the place.

Also known as Hostages in the Gulf, The Big Escape and From Hell to Victory, this is an intriguing early Menahem film that predates his later Cannon action mastery.

You can watch this on YouTube.