Thanks to Severin Films for including a quote from this site in the sales copy:
“A SIGNIFICANT MOVIE… One of the first zombie films made in color, it mostly played Southern drive-ins and Mexican cinemas before disappearing for over 40 years.” B&S About Movies
Extras on this release include an audio interview with distributor Samuel M. Sherman, an interview with author/filmmaker C. Courtney Joyner on Barry Mahon and a trailer.
The Dead One is a significant movie because it’s one of the first two zombie films made in color — the other is Dr. Blood’s Coffin — and it was made outside of the Hollywood system in New Orleans. It mostly played in Southern drive-ins, in Mexico and the UK before it disappeared for 41 years.
Shot in Eastmancolor and Ultrascope, a form of Cinemascope from Germany, The Dead One has a cool looking zombie and otherwise would be an unremarkable film other than the fact that it’s a Barry Mahon film and stands out from the rest of his output, which is either falls into the disparate genres of nudist films, roughies, propaganda movies or childen’s films.
Actually, the poster for this would like you to know just how remarkable this movie is, saying that The Dead One is “The Greatest VOODOO Film Ever Made – Filmed on Location in New Orleans Where VOODOO was introduced to the New World.”
This is probably the most restrained Mahon film I’ve seen. It played double bills for a long time, a filler for drive-ins that would run late into the night while what happened in the steamed up cars looked a lot like the other movies Barry was known for making.
“Good evening, fear fans. You’re just in time. Contents: one ventriloquist’s dummy Hacme Novelty Company, Battle Shriek, Michigan. Oh, goody! Watch this, kiddies. You won’t see my lips move. You know why? I don’t have any! Well hello, Dickie. Would you like me to tell a tale from the crypt? No thanks, death-breath. Then how about sitting a little closer to the fire?!”
Directed by Richard Donner and written by Frank Darabont and Steven Dodd — wow, this episode is bringing the wattage, right? — “The Ventriloquist’s Dummy” stars Bobcat Goldthwait as Billy Goldman, a horrible amateur ventriloquist who saw the final performance of his idol, Mr. Ingles (Don Rickles) and Marty, which ended in a fire, Ingles losing his hand, his girlfriend being killed and the end of his career.
Billy invites Mr. Ingles to see him perform and he bombs. The elder artist lashes out at him, telling him that he’s horrible with no technique or ability to work an audience. Moments later, a woman who was seen with Ingles is found dead and Billy was covering the body with his coat. When Billy finds the man he has looked up to so much, Ingles is shooting morphine into his stump. Calling him a junkie and murderer, Ingles says that Morty is the one who hates women. The truth is that Morty is no doll. He’s a conjoined twin at the wrist and the morphine is all that keeps him from killing. Now that he’s taken so long to give him his medicine, Morty attacks him and then Billy, who makes a deal with him to be a star.
However, Morty is always a step ahead of the person calling him a dummy.
This episode comes from the story of the same name from Tales from the Crypt #28. It was writtem by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Graham Ingels, who the Mr. Ingles character is named for.
This is a really great episode that is, as I said above, filled with talented people.
Third Hypothesis on a Case of Perfect Criminal Strategy is better known by the name Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why? It was directed by Giuseppe Vari (Rome Against Rome) and written by Thomas Lang. Carlo (Lou Castel) and girlfriend Olga (Beba Lončar) started with a fashion shoot on a remote beach but have already dropped the camera — and most of their clothes — when two cars show up. Men throw the body of a dead man — who turns out to be a prosecutor — into the other car, cover it with gasoline and light it up. state prosecutor. Instead of going to the police, Carlo decides to find out who did this and blackmail them with the photos he’s taken.
After talking to his pornographer Uncle Fifi (Massimo Serato), Carlo speaks to Don Salvatore (Fortunato Arena) about buying the photos. When he refuses, the photographer goes to the media, but his buyer Roversi (Carlo Landa) is soon killed, which means that both Carlo and the newspaper’s editor Mauri (Antonio La Raina) decide to figure out who is killing people who want these photos. Maybe they should have just gone to the police and Inspector Vezzi (Adolfo Celi). If they did, we wouldn’t have a movie, so that’s how it goes, I guess.
So how is this a giallo? Whoever wants the photos has gained some of the negatives and is killing anyone else who has seen them, as mentioned before, but they have black gloves, we never see them and their murders are in the style of the genre.
If that isn’t enough for you, some cuts of this movie have hardcore inserts, which is the definition of gratuitous.
Valerio Barigozzi (Johnny Dorelli) is a giallo writer who also writes the Countess Esmerelda column in the newspaper. One day, he accidentally gets a letter from a serial killer that reveals the next victim. He starts to get even more letters and each killing moves him up into the editorial office, but it also makes him more of a suspect.
Unlike most gialli, the killings aren’t important or even shown as murder set pieces. We only see the end result. The real villains are those using these murders to advance their careers, like our protagonist. Like many a gialli, there is a score by Ennio Morricone.
Directed by Luigi Zampa and written by Sergio Donati, this even winks at the giallo genre by showing the posters for Spasmo and Death Walks On High Heels outside of a theater (as well as Carrie, Destruction Force and The Beast In Heat).
Don’t come to this expecting the black gloves and razor of the giallo. Instead, see how far someone will go to be somebody. It feels very much like Zodiac years before Robert Graysmith wrote his book and reminded the public that a very real killer was mailing confessions and clues to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Eglima sto Kavouri (Crime In Kavouri) was released as He Murdered His Wife, The Rape Killer, Death Kiss (the name it played as on Commander USA’s Groovie Movies), Vai killer! (Go Killer!) and The Wife Killer, this Greek movie was directed by Kostas Karagiannis (Dangerous Cargo, Land of the Minotaur) and written by Thanos Leivaditis.
Jim (Larry Daniels, the American name for Lakis Komninos) has a good looking wife named Helen (Dorothy Moore) who gives him a yacht but since he already has a new love named Laura (Jane Paterson), he decides to kill her. To do that and not be arrested for it, he works with Mike (Vagelis Seilinos), a pantyhose-masked serial killer who has been stabbing couples on lover’s lanes. The plan? Mike roughs up Jim and kills Helen, then both men split up the money she’s worth. And some heroin, too.
Mike believes that Jim will kill him when the job is complete, so he finds someone that looks just like Helen and kills her, which is a plan, I guess. He keeps the real Helen in his basement but you know that she’s going to get out and ruin all of his planning. But let’s salute Vagelis Seilinos for going all out as he acts as a chloroform carrying choke-out killing machine.
Daniels and Moore were also in the Karagiannis film Tango of Perversion, which is pretty strange. This is a 70s furniture having giallo but in Greece instead of Italy and for that, it’s worth your time.
I Know That You Know That I Know stars its director, Alberto Sordi, as Fabio Bonetti, a banker who has been married to his wife Livia (Monica Vitti) for more than twenty years. All he cares about these days are football and watching TV. And then they meet a private detective (Giuseppe Mannajuolo) who has been filming them for two weeks, as he has been hired by the rich Vitali to watch his wife Elena (Micaela Pignatelli), but accidentally filmed them.
That’s when he shares what he has learned: their teenage daughter Veronica (Isabella De Bernardi) is on drugs, Livia is cheating on Fabio and, well, Fabio has days to live thanks to a mystery disease. That’s when Fabio decides to change his life. He’s never shown love to his daughter, who dresses in his clothes to shock him. He chose football matches over his wife and pushed her into another man’s bed. So he decides that before he dies, he’s going to fix his family.
Written by Sordi with Augusto Caminito (The Designated Victim) and Rodolfo Sonego (Vacanze di Natale ’91), this raises the same question I always have for American sitcoms. How could Monica Vitti — she was Modesty Blaise! — end up with Alberto Sordi? Some guys have all the luck.
Piero Zuffi was an Italian set designer and painter who worked for a decade at Milan’s historic opera house Teatro alla Scala. He also worked as a production designer on several movies, directed and wrote this movie — with Ennio Flaiano — and wrote one other, General Della Rovere.
So yeah, this is a poliziotteschi with giallo leanings, but when you’ve watched more than four hundred gialli, you start hunting for things you haven’t seen. Also released as Red Hot Shot and The Syndicate: A Death In The Family, this is the story of NYPD detective Frank Berin (Michael Reardon) who is trying to learn who killed a pharmaceutical company owner named Mac Brown (Vittorio Duse), gunning him down right in the middle of Wall Street. There are no leads or suspects, so Brown’s daughter Monica (Barbara Bouchet) goes on TV and offers a reward of $250,000 for any information.
Berin is no fan of the Brown family, as he’s always felt that they ran the heroin trade in the Big Apple, but his case ended when his main witness Fanny (Susanna Martinková) was blinded. And Monica is worried that whoever killed her father is coming after her. That killer could be her fiancee, Don Carbo (David Groh).
What’s kind of strange is that Michael Reardon was in two acting roles. This movie and a bit part on the Burt Reynolds’ TV show Hawk. And that’s it. This movie is near impossible to find and Reardon died in 2006. This was given an X rating for some reason, so it never really played, but it’s astounding thanks to Berin going wild with its look, filling it with a great Piero Picceroni score, parties in mirrored rooms, numerous flashing light shows, old rich people gorging themselves on a nonstop menu of food while near a swimming pool and a scene where drug addicts nearly take on the look and feel of Romero’s zombies. And perhaps strangest of all, Bouchet is a brunette!
There are giallo elements in this and yes, there are tons of plot holes and the story isn’t all that great, but there are so many weird elements in it that I think you really have to see it. Speaking of the soundtrack, it’s been released several times, but this hasn’t come out on DVD or blu ray. In a world where every movie has been rereleased so many times, let’s get this out and into peoples’ hands!
Human Cobras is the story of Tony Garden (George Ardisson), who was exiled from the United States but now has to return after the death of his twin brother John. He takes his brother’s wife — and his ex-lover — Leslie (Erika Blanc) with him to get revenge, which takes him all the way to Kenya after finding a clue written in blood. Blood drawn from a razor-wielding killer because, yes, this is a giallo.
They get there and start looking for John’s business partner George MacGreaves (Alberto de Mendoza) but the killer has followed them. So while Tony is romancing Clara (Janine Reynaud), Leslie is taking a bubble bath or being stalked by the black-gloved villain.
Directed by Bitto Albertini using the name Albert J. Walkner, this has a Ernesto Gastaldi and Eduardo Manzanos Borchero script that’s better than the direction. Oh Bitto, you are better off making movies like the two Black Emanuelle movies and Escape from Galaxy 3 than trying to make a twist and turn giallo. Imagine if Get Carter had Eurospy elements and wanted to be a giallo while also having some ghost moments where Blanc thinks she sees her dead lover, then drop that later subplot. It also has a hero, of sorts, who has no issue with dumping a woman’s body in a waterfall or going elephant hunting, which knowing this is an Italian film, you can imagine that yes, elephants were really killed. That said, Luciano Martino produced it, so it has some quality to it and there’s a role for Luciano Pigozzi as a New York City gangster who gets shook down by our protagonist.
Usually Franco Nero is the hero of a film, but in this, he’s nearly the villain from the beginning. He’s Walter Mancini, an alcoholic reporter on an RV vacation with his wife Eve (Corinne Cléry). Five minutes into the movie, he’s saying that he wishes that the wild game he shot and is barbecuing was his wife with a spit in her ass, drinking so much that he forgets his name and pretty much assaulting Eve while other campers can listen to his loud lovemaking moans.
The next morning, they get on the road and quickly pick up Adam Konitz (David Hess) and let me ask you, why would you ever pick up a hitchhiker that looks like David Hess? Within seconds, he’s asking Eve filthy questions and in the middle of a roadside fistfight with Walter. He pulls a gun on the couple and hijacks their vacation and makes them drive him to Mexico. Walter tries to outsmart him by writing SOS on his matchbook, but Adam gets the drop on both police officers, leaving their bodies bleeding on a desert highway.
On the way to the border, a truck attacks like something out of Duel. It’s Konitz’s partners, looking for the $2 million he stole from them. He ends up killing them, which exposes the fact that they only cared about the money and not sheer depravity, like Konitz, who then ties up Walter and makes him watch him assault Eve, who because this is an Italian movie ends up in bliss by the end of it. Walter and Konitz fight and a nude Eve emerges from their trailer with the killer’s rifle, blowing him away.
This is where any other movie would end, but for some reason, Walter keeps the killer’s body in the trailer and tells Eve they are keeping the money. After stopping for gas, four young motorcycle riders cover the road in oil and cause the Manicini car to crash. Is this where it ends? No, because after they steal $300 from Walter’s wallet, they have no idea how much money is in the backseat. Eve can barely move and can only watch while her husband pulls out Konitz’s body in the front seat and setting everything on fire.
He climbs up a hill and starts hitchhiking himself.
Based on The Violence and the Fury by Peter Kane, Franco Nero wanted to be in this movie because he had wanted to work with director Pasquale Festa Campanile. He was in Germany shooting 21 Hours at Munich with Hess when Companile asked him to be in the movie. Nero suggested that Hess come with him and be in this movie.
A few days before shooting, Nero hurt his hand punching an unruly horse on the set of Keoma. That’s why there’s a scene where he trips on the insurance man’s tent and breaks his arm.
This is set in California, but shooting there was too expensive. Instead, it was filmed in the mountains of the Gran Sasso in central Italy. To complete the film magic, American-like gas stations were built.
It’s also known as Death Drive and The Naked Prey, both of which are great titles. In the U.S., as you can already guess, it was released on video as Hitchhike: Last House on the Left.
Campanile was mostly known for his commedia sexy all’italiana, so I was shocked by how dark and hate-filled this movie is. Walter is an absolute loser, a man whose writing couldn’t pay the bills — ask a man about who he is and he will start with what he does for a living — and now he must work for Eve’s father. Feeling beat down, all he does is drink and abuse his wife. If anything, Eve has the least hope in this, as she keeps trying to believe in her husband even when he almost gets her killed.
What pushes it even further is the Ennio Morricone score, as well as the song “Sunshine,” which is first heard in a moment of fun as everyone drinks together at the camping area. By the end of the movie, each time that you hear it is filled with dread, like it keeps reminding you that things were bad at the start of this movie but they’ve somehow gotten even more bleak.
There are two alternate endings. There’s one in which the car explodes just as Walter and Eve reach for the money. The French ending has Walter and Eve laughing and leaving with the money after Konitz is shot.
I love this movie because it’s everything you expect when you see David Hess and the exact opposite of who Franco Nero usually is on film. It’s devoted to being a bad road trip the entire way with no hope and the only humor being as black as it can be.
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