A mezzanotte va la ronda del piacere (At Midnight the Pleasure Patrol Goes) is also known as The Immortal Bachelor, Midnight Pleasures and Midnight Lovers.

Gabriella (Claudia Cardinale, Blonde In Black Leather) is trapped in a loveless marriage to Andrea (Vittorio Gassman) and sees a lot of herself as she sits on the jury for the murder trial of Tina (Monica Vitti), who has killed her husband Gino (Giancarlo Giannini).

Or did she?

As Tina testifies, Gabriella wishes she had the passion in her marriage that Tina seemed to have. And then she learns why Tina and Gino had their last fight. Her new lover was Andrea. Gabriella begs her husband to testify in Tina’s defense but he leaves the country, only for Gino to show up, alive and ready to fight — and make love — to his wife again.

Director Marcello Fondato, who co-wrote this with Francesco Scardamaglia, was one of the writers of Black Sabbath and Blood and Black Lace.

FVI didn’t release this movie in the U.S. until 1980. Cardinale and Vitti are much better in Blonde In Black Leather, which New World released here as Lucky Girls.

Roger Ebert hated this and said, “Faithful readers will recall that I have, in the past, occasionally referred to Idiot Plots. The Immortal Bachelor is a classic Idiot Plot, requiring that everyone in the movie be an idiot. If they weren’t, they’d solve their problems instantly and the movie would be a short subject.”

Also known as Simone e Matteo – Un gioco da ragazzi, Simón y Mateo and Kid Stuff, this stars Antonio Cantafora and Paul L. Smith in one of the series of movies they made trying to imitate Terence Hill and Bud Spencer that includes Carambola!, Carambola’s Philosophy: In the Right Pocket, We Are No Angels and The Diamond Peddlers.

FVI took it one step further by renaming them in America as Terrance Hall and Bob Spencer. Smith sued, saying The only thing an actor has is his name and if that’s taken away, he has nothing.” That case was Smith v. Montoro, 648 F.2d 602. Smith alleged that he had acted in the leading role and had a contract granting him star billing. However, when the film was distributed in the U.S. by FVI, his name was stripped from the film. The Ninth Circuit federal court of appeals granted Smith standing to sue the filmmakers, but it is unknown how the case was finally settled. Rumors say that he won.

Toby and Butch (Cantafora and Smith) are dumb criminals moving insecticide from Italy to France but in truth, they don’t know that they are smuggling guns. There are also gangsters trying to get the guns but they can’t outfight these two. 

This was directed by Giuliano Carnimeo (Find A Place to Die, the Sartana films) and written by Sergio Bazzini and Tulio Demicheli. The music — which will repeat throughout and get stuck in your head — is by Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, the men who call themselves Oliver Onions.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Beyond the Door II is, of course, Mario Bava’s Shock retitled by Film Ventures International.

Shock was Bava’s last film. Following a series of failures to reach theaters, including Rabid Dogs, Lamberto Bava continued to push his father to make a new movie. Originally written by Dardano Sacchetti and Francesco Barbieri after they wrote A Bay of Blood, this movie was loosely based on Hillary Waugh’s The Shadow Guest. Lamberto has also stated that he wanted this to be a modern film that was influenced by Stephen King.

Bava started pre-production as early as 1973, shooting screen tests with Mimsy Farmer for the lead role. Shot in five weeks, some of the film was directed by Lamberto based on his father’s storyboards, which is why he has the credit “collaboration to the direction.” He directed all of Ivan Rassimov’s scenes.

It’s a sparse film — there are only three characters (well, three living characters). Dora (Daria Nicolodi, who should be canonized for giving birth to both Suspiria and Asia Argento, as well as roles in Deep Red, Inferno, Opera and so much more) and Bruno (John Steiner, Yor Hunter from the Future‘s Overlord) are a newly married couple who have just moved back into her old home — the very same place where her drug-addicted husband killed himself — along with her son, Marco.

Dora’s had some real issues dealing with her husband’s death. And Bruno is never home to help, as he’s a pilot for a major airline. Either she’s losing her mind or her son is evil or he’s possessed or her new husband is gaslighting her or every single one of those things is happening all at once. You have not seen a kid this creepy perhaps ever — he watches his mother and stepfather make love, declaring them pigs before using his potential psychic powers to throw things at them. Then he tells his mom he wants to kill her, followed by nearly making his stepfather’s plane crash just by putting an image of the man’s face on a swing.

While Bava was sick throughout the filming (and his son Lamberto would fill in), you can definitely see his style shine through the simple story. There’s one scene of Dora’s face and her dead husband’s and then her face that repeats vertically that will blow your mind.

The secret of the film? Dora’s ex-husband forced her to take a mix of heroin and LSD, at which point she tripped out and killed him. Bruno dumped his body in the ocean and arranged for her to be placed in an insane asylum until she recovered. Now, the ex-husband’s ghost has returned and demands blood. And he gets it.

Perhaps the finest shot in here is when Dora is lying in the bed and you see her hair fall like she’s upside down, but then it goes back like it’s in the wind, all while it seems like she’s being ravaged. I have no idea how Bava did this shot, but it’s so visually arresting that it’s stuck in my mind for days. There’s also his famous Texas switch where Marco runs into his mother’s arms, only to be replaced by her ex-husband and that horrifying scene with the rake.

There’s also music from I Libra, a Goblin off-shoot. It seems kind of strange against Bava’s old school direction, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t love it. It’s a stylish and scary film that’s way better than any Exorcist clone, despite its U.S title.

William Girder died in a helicopter crash while scouting locations in 1978. If that hadn’t ended his life, who knows the heights of lunacy he would have achieved?

In just six years, he directed nine feature films — Asylum of Satan, The Get Man, Three on a Meathook, The Manitou, Sheba Baby, Project: Kill, the astonishing Abby, Grizzly and this movie.

This had to have been the first movie about the loss of Earth’s ozone layer. Who knew that it would drive everyone nuts, including animals? Certainly not the hikers in this tale who turn against one another and try to survive all of the animal assaults.

Steve Buckner (Christopher George, who is fighting with Michael Pataki and George Eastman for most appearances on this site) has a dozen or so hikers who are about to go to Sugar Meadow for a nature hike, even though Ranger Chico Tucker (former NFL player Walt Barnes) tells him that the animals have been acting strangely.

Along for this nature trail to hell are anthropologist Professor MacGregor (Richard Jaeckel, Grizzly), a married couple named Frank and Mandy Young (Jon Cedar, who in addition to being a recurring Nazi on Hogan’s Heroes was also the co-star, co-screenwriter and associate producer of The Manitou and Susan Backlinie, the first victim in Jaws), rich Shirley Goodwyn (Ruth Roman from The Baby!), her son Johnny, teenage lovers Bob Dennins (Andrew Stevens, who was in the Night Eyes films) and Beth Hughes, a former pro football player dealing with cancer named Roy Moore, a magical Native American guide named Daniel Santee (Michael Ansara, Killer Kane from the 1980’s Buck Rogers series as well as the voice of Mr. Freeze), a television reporter named Terry Marsh (Lynda Day George, always ready to scream “BASTARDS!”) and finally, a frenzied Leslie Neilsen in the role of his career as Paul Jenson, an ad executive who acts like every account guy I’ve ever had to deal with in my 24-year-long ad career.

Before you know it, wolves are attacking people in sleeping bags, vultures circle overhead, hawks knock women off cliffs, Leslie Nielsen goes beyond bonkers and kills a dude with a walking stick and threatens to assault women before wrestling a bear and getting his neck torn out, rats attack the sheriff who decides to eat before trying to figure out how to deal with this emergency, dogs turn on the people they loved, rattlesnakes bite people and the military dons hazmats suits to deal with all of it.

If you haven’t figured it out yet, this movie is stupid. And awesome. It’s stupid awesome. And if you only know Nielsen from his later comedic roles, take a look at him in this movie. I love this movie. I don’t care what you think of me.

Here’s the drink to enjoy while you watch this movie.

Tentacle Painkiller

• 2 oz. Kraken spiced rum
• 4 oz. pineapple juice
• 1 oz. orange juice
• 1 oz. cream of coconut
• Dash of nutmeg
• Pinch of salt

1. Pour rum, pineapple juice, orange juice and cream of coconut into a cocktail shaker with ice. Mix it up.
2. Pour into a glass filled with ice. Drop in salt to give it the taste of the ocean and then top with nutmeg.

You can watch this on Tubi or get the blu ray from Severin.

Who has had a crazier life than Matt Cimber? Born Thomas Vitale Ottavian, he met his first wife Jayne Mansfield when he directed her on Broadway in Bus Stop. Just think about how his other two wives felt, competing with Jayne Mansfield. Come on.

He’s directed everything from Mansfield’s last movie Single Room Furnished to The Sexually Liberated Female, a cycle of three Blaxploitation films (The Black Six, which featured six currently playing football stars in Gene Washington, a San Francisco 49er Gene Washington, Pittsburgh Steeler Joe Greene,  Miami Dolphins’ running back Mercury Morris, Detroit Lions cornerback Lem Barney, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Willie Lanier and Minnesota Vikings defense end Carl Eller;  as well as Lady Cocoa and the Candy Tangerine Man), The Witch Who Came from the Sea and two Pia Zadora films, Fake-Out and Butterfly. He also created and directed the original Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling TV show (he’s played by Marc Maron and named Sam Sylvia in the Netflix series).

Today, we’re here to discuss Hundra, one of the two films he made with Laurene Landon (the other is Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold). 

Hundra is the only youngster in her tribe of Amazons who hasn’t been with a man and she has no problem letting the other ladies know. Sadly, every member of her tribe soon gets killed by barbarians and the old wise woman wants her to have kids rather than get revenge. And that means she needs a baby daddy.

One dude has bad manners and tries to kill her. Another is a thief who only wants to kill her. The other is a gay pimp. Finally, she meets a healer, but other ladies have to teach her how to seduce him. Obviously, they teach her well, because she’s soon with child until a sorcerer takes her baby and forces her into a humiliating ritual, but she soon escapes and takes everyone out.

Luckily, as the narrator tells us, the spirit of Hundra lives within women from then until now. Also, somehow, someway, Ennio Morricone was conned into doing the soundtrack for this film, which is way under his legendary talent.

Star Laurene Landon also shows up in the recently released Terror Tales, as well as The Stuff, It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, Maniac Cop, Wicked Stepmother and many others. She’s the best part of this movie, totally devoted to the action sequences and doing every stunt except for one fall off a 180-foot building.

Directed by Mark Byers and written by Daniel Yost (whose next movie was Drugstore Cowboy), Criminal Act is also known as Tunnels. It has what I refer to as a Sam cast: Catherine Bach, John Saxon, Luis Avalos from The Electric Company and Vic Tayback are the best known members.

Pam Weiss (Bach) and Sharon Fields (Charles Dallas) are an investigative reporter and her photographer. Their boss, Herb Tamplin (Saxon), wants them to settle down and learn how to be good reporters. They’re willing to instead run right at danger and both be the love interest of Ron Bellard (Nicolas Guest), the brother of the movie’s villain Lance Bellard (Victor Brandt).

This is also supposed to have giant mutant rats and be kind of like C.H.U.D. but instead only has a homeless guy who occasionally bites someones. Yes, the millionaire evil brother is cleaning the homeless up by sending them out of the city which is totally illegal.

That said, Rick Zumwalt — Bull Hurley from Over the Top — is in this and I can’t fault a movie that has both him and Daisy Duke in it, much less John Saxon. Vic Tayback’s role is so small it had to be him stopping at catering and walking on to pay for the craft services he quaffed down.

Not the movie I was hoping for but what can you do?

You can watch this on Tubi.

From 1972 to 1978, William Girder directed nine feature films and would have probably never stopped, were it not for the helicopter crash that took his life while scouting the Philippines filming locations. From Asylum of Satan and Three on a Meathook to The Manitou, Sheba Baby and Project: Kill, his films may have been derivative but they made money.

Here’s the best example. Around these parts, Girder is celebrated for Abby, a movie that was removed from theaters because of its similarity (let’s say total ripoff) of The Exorcist. That brings us to Grizzly, which is essentially Jaws on dry land. With a bear. A grizzly bear.

Grizzly found its inspiration when its producer and writer, Harvey Flaxman, came face to face with a bear during a camping trip. Co-producer and co-writer David Sheldon thought about how they could make a bear version of Jaws and they wrote a script that Girdler discovered and offered to finance, as long as he could direct.

Grizzly begins with military vet and helicopter pilot Don Stober (Andrew Prine, The Town that Dreaded Sundown, The Eliminators, Amityville II: The Possession) flying over a national park and explaining how the woods remain untouched, much like they were in when Native Americans made their homes here.

The first two attacks happen quickly — in bear POV no less — when two female hikers are dismembered by the ursus arctos horribilis villain of this story. That brings in park ranger Michael Kelly (Christopher George, Gates of Hell/City of the Living Dead, Day of the Animals, Mortuary, Pieces) and photographer Allison Corwin (Joan McCall, who besides being in Devil Times Five is also married to the film’s writer, Sheldon) in on the case.

At the hospital, a doctor tells the park ranger that a bear killed the girls, but the park’s supervisor blames the ranger and naturalist Arthur Scott (Richard Jaeckel, The Dark, Mako: The Jaws of Death and TV’s Salvage 1) for the girls’ deaths. And guess what? Just like Jaws, there’s no way the park is getting closed before tourist season.

The rangers all decide to search the mountain for the grizzly, which isn’t accounted for in their census of animals in the park. One of the rangers — of course — decides to get nude in a waterfall because that’s what you do when you’re hunting a killer bear and gets murked for her stupidity.

Kelly and Stober think they have found the bear from the air, yet it’s just naturalist Scott wearing an animal pelt and tracking the bear himself. Scott tells them that this bear is actually a prehistoric version of the grizzly that stands 15 feet tall and weighs at least 2,000 pounds.

No matter how many people the grizzly kills, no one will close the park. So when the story becomes national news, the owners of the park — a national park can have owners? — allow amateur hunters to shoot the shark (this has nothing to do with the very same thing happening in Jaws, right?). Those hunters are pretty much the worst people ever, as they use a bear cub as bait, thinking the grizzly will protect its young. Nope — it eats that baby bear and keeps on coming.

The grizzly literally shreds his way through the park and nobody closes it down until it murders a young mother and mutilates her child. And get this — the grizzly is so smart, it knows how to bury the naturalist in the ground and then waits for him to wake up so it can kill him. Can a bear be a slasher killer? Well, we already know that Bigfoot can be, thanks to Night of the Demon.

The grizzly kills every hero in this movie other than Kelly the photographer, who magically finds a bazooka in the wrecked helicopter and remembers the end of every shark movie: you must blow this beast up real good. She does and that’s the end of Grizzly.

An interesting personal note: I was telling my dad about this movie and he remembered that it has played on a bus that took he and my mother on a casino trip. That’s right — at 1 AM, pitch blackness, the TV on their bus blared this gorefest as loudly as possible. “I couldn’t wait for that movie to end,” was my mother’s review. My father’s was a bit kinder.

Warner Brothers originally wanted to finance Grizzly, but were furious that Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International (FVI) had taken the project. That’s because a year before, the studio sued both of these companies for copyright infringement when they released Beyond the Door in the US.

Sadly, while Grizzly was one of 1976’s best-performing films, earning $39 million worldwide (adjusted for inflation, that’s around $177 million in 2018 dollars), its distributor Edward L. Montoro and Film Ventures International kept all the profits. Girdler and Harvey Flaxman and David Sheldon (the film’s screenwriters/producers) had to sue to get their share.

Even after all that, Girdler still directed Day of the Animals, a spiritual sequel to Grizzly, for Montoro. While this film added Leslie Nielsen and Lynda Day George to the returning cast of Christopher George and Richard Jaeckel, it wasn’t as successful.

Grizzly just seems like a movie that’s buried in legal shenanigans. A sequel, Grizzly II: The Predator (also known as Grizzly II: The Concert, a title that would assuredly guarantee that I would buy this film) was made in 1983.

Filmed in Hungary by André Szöts and written by Sheldon, the co-producer and writer of the original, it was never released. The film had Louise Fletcher, John Rhys-Davies and unknowns but about to be big stars like Charlie Sheen (who took this movie over the lead in Karate Kid), George Clooney and Laura Dern in the cast, as well as live performances (hence Grizzly II: The Concert) by musicians like Toto Coelo (who had one song I can name, “I Eat Cannibals Part 1”) and Landscape III.

The movie was such a mess that the film’s caterer ended up rewriting it. And while the main filming was completed, special effects and all of the actual bear footage wasn’t. That’s because the film’s executive producer Joseph Proctor had disappeared with the money (and may have even been already jailed when filming began). While a mechanical bear was to be used, there was still footage shot of a live bear attacking concert-goers filmed (!). There’s a bootleg workprint, but the full film has ever emerged. This New York Post article has even more amazing info about Grizzly 2.

Finally, a trivia note for comic book fans. The amazing poster for this movie? Neal Adams did the art.

And in the universe of Tarantino, Don Stober was played by Rick Dalton, not Andrew Prine.

Here’s the recipe you can drink while you watch this movie.

Honey Bear

• 1 oz. bourbon
• 2 oz. apple cider
• 1/2 oz. Cointreau
• 1 oz. honey, orange and sage syrup
• Sliced orange

Pre-work: To make the syrup use the following ingredients:

• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup honey
• 3 tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. ground sage
• 2 orange slices
• 1 tsp. orange zest

1. Heat a small pan on high, then heat up all ingredients to boiling.
2. Simmer for 3 minutes and let cool. Store in refrigerator for up to a week.

To make the drink:

1. Pour bourbon and honey, orange and sage syrup in an ice-filled glass.
2. Top with apple cider.

You can watch this on Tubi or get it from Severin.

Don Hulette somehow went from the music to Starhops to directing this, which feels like a glitch in the matrix which is IMDB. Kind of the same feeling one gets realizing that they’re about to watch a trucking movie starring Chuck Norris, who said, “I didn’t know anything when I made that movie. We shot it in just 11 days. But it was amazing, people loved it anyway. It’s a down-home kind of movie. It’s still my dad’s favorite.”

J.D. (Chuck Norris) is a trucker from California who learns that his friend was paralyzed after being beaten by Texas City cops Sergeant Strode and Deputy Boles, who have a history of entrapping truckers and sending them to jail. J.D. warns his brother Billy to stay out of Texas City, the kid doesn’t listen and goes missing.

That brings J.D. to town, winning over single mom waitresses and accidentally killing mechanics, which gets him sentenced to death by Judge Trimmings. Luckily, J.D.’s new hash slinging old lady calls in a convoy of big rigs to save him. Jack Nance is in this, too. Yes, the same Jack Nance who was in Eraserhead. Life’s funny like that.

While not a Film Ventures production, it did play on a double feature they distributed along with Kill or Be Killed.

Directed by Michael Cort, who wrote it with Alistair McKenzie and Christopher Neame, The Love Factor is also known as Zeta One. It’s about secret agent James Word (Robin Hawdon) telling his boss W’s Ann (Yutte Stensgaard, Some Girls Do) about his latest adventure just as we also meet Zeta (Dawn Addams, The Vault of Horror) and her cadre of alien women from the planet Angvia — get it, it’s an anagram for vagina — who are trying to find new girls for their planet while also fighting off Major Bourden (James Robertson Justice) and his henchman Swyne (Charles Hawtrey).

Zeta has a formidable force of extraordinary magnitude, including Brigitte Skay (Isabella Duchess of the Devils), Anna Gael (Nana), Wendy Lingham, Valerie Leon (Queen Kong), Kirsten Betts (Twins of Evil) and Carol Hawkins (The Body Stealers).

Released in America by Film Ventures International four years after it played England as Zeta One, it was first shown as The Love Slaves and the next year was renamed The Love Factor. It was produced by Tigon and Vernon Sewell directed some of the scenes.

This is like Bond, Barbarella and pop art mixed with pasties, go go boots and the kind of humor that has the secret agent show up late and just want to make love to the many, many aliens he’s battling. It doesn’t make much sense, but who cares? It starts with a thirty-minute strip poker scene that really goes nowhere as well, but when you’re having fun, who is looking at the run time?