The Count of Montebruno (Claudio Gora) was just trying to clean up his gigantic mansion in time for his niece Harriet (Barbara Steele) to visit.  As part of this, a statue is found at the bottom of the lake and brought back to its original splendor by artist Roberto Morigi (Anthony Steffen). Of course, it turns out that the status looks exactly like Harriet but is truly one of Belinda, an ancestor who was a witch who held the entire village in her grip.

Now, Harriet has become Belinda and uses her beauty to destroy men — and a woman — in scene after scene of twisted sexual frisson. In one, she makes the gardener enflamed with desire by alternately asking him to watch her disrobe and attacking him with a riding crop. There’s no nudity, but somehow by being not in your face explicit it all seems somehow more perverted. The man becomes so overwhelmed that he attacks every woman in the village and he’s not the last man to feel her ways, as a teacher hangs himself, a woodsman kills his entire family and even the maid is forced into evil because of the womanly power that is Belinda.

Camillo Mastrocinque also made another Italian gothic, Terror In the Crypt.

I can’t even put into words — I’ve tried, you just read it all — how much I love this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Carlo Ausino — Charles Austin — started his directing and writing career with La città dell’ultima paura, which he followed with Double Game, which also has Annarita Grapputo in the cast. As you can guess, it got this title when released in other countries, as it’s called La Villa Delle Anime Maledette (The Villa of the Cursed Souls) in Italy.

In 1955, two men are fighting. One kills the other with a knife, then a woman grabs the knife and stabs the killer. She runs into a cemetery where she’s dragged into a grave by a demon’s hand. This is called how to start a movie in a great way.

Years later, her daughter Elisa (Grapputo, who is also in Magnum Cop and Like Rabid Dogs) is at a seance when she hears her dead mother warn her to never go to the villa.

So she goes to the villa.

That’s because she and her cousins Bruno (Fausto Lombardi) and Tony (Antonio Campa) inherit the place and are told they can never sell it or rent it. They have to keep on the caretaker (Paul Teitcheid), and all move in. Bruno even brings his wife Sonia (Ileana Fraia, The Killer Nun), who is the first to die when she’s hit by a car. At this point, both Bruno and Tony realize that they’re in an Italian exploitation movie and decide to have sex with their cousin, who is a virgin. Not at the same time. I mean, they may be incestual, but they have some morality. Well, not Bruno, who has to have a heir and who always believed it was his wife’s fault he didn’t have a child, so he tries to assault Elisa, who has learned that she’s of the seventh generation cursed by the house, thanks to a diary.

While all that’s happening, the lawyer who read the will has a secretary who used to be his lover named Martha (Beba Loncar, Interrabang) who is also a student of the occult. When her lover Ugo (Jean-Pierre Aumont, Cauldron of Blood) dies, she also comes to the villa.

There’s also a giallo killer wandering outside, as well as lots of fog inside. I have no idea what the curse on Elisa was other than she’s in a haunted house. Then again, this has a great tagline, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust — but not for long!” As you can see, that also sounds good and makes no sense. Maybe that’s why I like this movie. It’s an Italian Gothic, which means it’s probably not going to be logical and this movie just totally overachieves on that.

I love this movie but you’re probably going to hate it.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Goffredo Lombardo of Titanus wanted Italian films to not just be seen in Italy but around the world.

Director Riccardo Freda and cinematographer Mario Bava wanted to make a horror movie. Freda believed that until now, only Americans and German expressionists could make a movie like he had in mind.

Lombardo did not care for horror but gave the team a low budget.

They made magic.

On the 12th day of production, Freda left the set. After an argument with producers, Bava took over, changing parts of the story and the ending.

Again, magic was being made.

A series of mysterious killings are being investigated in Paris, as women of the same blood type are being drained by someone the press calls The Vampire. Journalist Pierre Lantin investigates and becomes even more involved when his dancer fiancee Nora Duval is kidnapped, possibly by The Vampire.

There’s also a man named Joseph addicted to something and is told that he must follow orders to get his next dose. He’s also blackmailing Professor Julian Du Grand, who soon meets with a woman shrouded in darkness named Marguerite who threatens the scholar. We learn that he has died unexpectedly, possibly by suicide, soon after.

Another woman named Lorette is kidnapped and kept in a room filled with the skeletons of past victims. And the truth is the Professor’s death has been faked so that he can work for the woman behind all of this, Gisele, a female vampire who ages each night. She and Marguerite are the same person, a woman who will use anyone and do anything she can to remain eternally young.

Released in the U.S. as The Devil’s Commandment and also as Lust of the Vampire, which has new scenes added with “Grandpa” Al Lewis added. This was the first Italian horror film of the speaking film era.

Mario Bava and Piero Regnoli’s last-minute rewrites — they were running out of time to make this movie — made Pierre the lead instead of a supporting character. This was needed as all of the other actors had only signed up for ten days.

Much like an other Italian vampire movie, Atom Age Vampire, there are no vampires in this movie. There are some amazing dungeons and the start of what Bava would bring to his movies.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Mondo Cane kept influencing movies a quarter a decade after it was released, as this film uses its all over the place format — in this case, a girl explores New York City — to showcase a variety of performance artists and give you an idea of what was happening in the late 80’s art scene. It was produced by Night Flight creator Stuart S. Shapiro.

This movie includes performances by Charlie Barnett (who was nearly selected for Saturday Night Live; Eddie Murphy was picked instead. He’s also Tyrone in D.C. Cab), drag star Joey Arias (Big Top Pee-Wee), Rick Aviles (who in addition to hosting It’s Showtime at the Apollo, also killed Swayze in Ghost), Phoebe Legere (the Toxic Avenger’s girlfriend), poet Karen Finley, Robert Mapplethorpe collaborator Veronica Vera, no wave star Lydia Lunch, shaman artist Frank Moore, performance artist Ann Magnuson and Joe Coleman, who eats mice heads and nearly blows himself up.

Director Harvey Keith also was the creator of the Fat Boys’ video for “Are You Ready for Freddy,” which is just one of the many pieces of art he’d created.

The MVD blu ray release of this movie has a brand new 2K HD transfer from the original camera negative. It also has interviews with Joe Coleman, Joey Arias, Shannah Laumeister and producer Stuart Shapiro as well as a photo gallery, a soundtrack CD, a 2-sided poster, an 18-page book and a limited edition slipcover. You can get it from MVD.

Two years ago, Severin released Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection, a collection of 31 remastered films on 14 discs. This movie appears at the center of it and if you know nothing of the story of Adamson — somehow a man who could work with both Colonel Sanders and Charles Manson — get ready to have your mind blown out of the back of your brain.

Beyond his 1995 demise, murdered by live-in contractor Fred Fulford and buried inside his home, Adamson’s life is of extreme interest to me, as it should be anyone coming to this site.

The son of silent film star Denver Dixon and actress Dolores Booth, Adamson was involved in movies from the age of six, as he acted in his father’s 1935 film Desert Mesa.

After helping his father make Halfway to Hell in 1961 and meeting Sam Sherman, the two would join with Dan Kennis to create Independent-International Pictures, the makers of movies like Satan’s Sadists and the astounding Dracula vs. Frankenstein. They’d go on to recreate — rip off, really — the Blood Island films in the U.S., as well as movies in the stewardess — well, he invented that category — western and biker genres, often shot at Spahn Ranch.

This film hits on everything I love and I couldn’t have been more overjoyed watching it. I’ve been holding off, needing something to look forward to and this was more than worth that wait. Alien conspiracies? Murder? Go-go dancing? Shady characters? Stuntpeople? Carnival Magic? This has all of that and so much more.

Outside of a movie where George Eastman, John Saxon and Santo team up to battle Adolfo Celi, Telly Savalas and Christopher Lee to save Edwige Fenech, Marisa Mell and Caroline Munro from being horribly murdered, I can’t think of a film that I more want to watch again and again. While the movie of my dreams will never be made, I am deliriously happy that this exists.

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

Jessica (Sondra Currie) and her new husband Seth Hartwell (Rigg Kennedy) are Mormons on the way to Utah when Frank Brock (Ben Frank) and his men attack. They make him watch each of them have sex with her and shoot them both. He dies, she doesn’t and soon she’s learning how to shoot a gun from Rufe (Rod Cameron) and bringing three female convicts — Kana (Ellyn Stern), Rachel (Jennifer Bishop) and Claire (Regina Carroll) — to get revenge.

I’m always a bit strange about rape revenge movies because to get on the lead’s side, we have to watch them go through hell. This movie does get pretty fun — almost too fun, it has scenes where women have sex so powerful that dying and injured men become healthy — but that seems not from the same movie as the dark opening.

You can watch this on Tubi.

As a seven-year-old in a small Western Pennsylvania town, my only window into New York City was the noon news on WOR. And NYC seemed like the end of the world, like The New York Ripper and Maniac in real life.

The Warriors goes even further, never telling us that it takes place after the end of the world but it sure doesn’t have to.

This is a movie so violent that Paramount Pictures temporarily halted their advertising campaign and released theater owners from their obligation to show the film. In 1979, it frightened people. Today, it’s a beloved cult hit.

Cyrus (Roger Hill), leader of the Gramercy Riffs has asked each of the five hundred gangs of the city to send nine unarmed people to Van Cortlandt Park. He asks for a truce among the gangs. Since they outnumber the cops three to one, he believes that they can run the city.

The Warriors, a gang from Coney Island, include leader Cleon (Dorsey Wright), his second-in-command Swan (Michael Beck), Fox (Thomas G. Waites), graffiti artist Rembrandt (Marcelino Sánchez), Snow (Brian Tyler), Cowboy (Tom McKitterick), Cochise (David Harris), Ajax (James Remar) and Vermin (Terry Michos).

As they listen to Cyrus, a shot rings out. It’s fired by Luther (David Patrick Kelly), the insane leader of the Rogues. He blames the Warriors, as Vermin watches him fire that killing bullet, and the entire city of New York City is suddenly against the Warriors, who must fight the whole way back to Coney Island. Cleon is killed and the gang doesn’t even know how much trouble they’re in.

On the way home, they encounter the Turnbull ACs, the Orphans — their member Mercy (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) sees something in Swan and leaves — as well as the Baseball Furies, the Lizzies and the Punks. The gang is separated and some of them are arrested and injured, but everyone makes it back home, just in time to have to battle the Rogues, just as the Riffs arrive, having learned that the Warriors weren’t the ones to blame. Cue “In the City” and a walk down the beach.

Sounds simple, but it isn’t. The Warriors transcends gang movie formula of the past and presents the gangs not as a social problem but as a belief and protection system. The book that it’s based on — Sol Yurick’s The Warriors, which was based on Xenophon’s Anabasis — almost was an AIP movie in 1969. I can only imagine how incredible that would have been.

Director Walter Hill, who wrote this with David Shaber, wanted this movie to be a living and breathing comic book with splash pages introducing each scene. The budget wasn’t there for that but unlike so many comic book movies, this film understands the spare narrative of comics. The subway scene, where rich kids get on and sit across from Swan and Mercy and he makes her stop fixing her hair…that’s incredible. It says everything, that he has pride and finally accepts her and wants her to have it as well.

What I love most is the influence this movie has had on Italian films, from the DJ that voices the action in Zombie 3 to the near-sequels of Enzo Castellari, 1990: The Bronx Warriors and Escape the Bronx. Often, those movies are seen as post-apocalyptic films but in truth, they recapture the look and feel of The Warriors. 1990 was even shot in New York and has some of the same energy on an even smaller budget.

The Arrow Video 4K UHD and blu ray releases of The Warriors are overflowing with extras that will add to your love of this movie. You get exclusive new 4K remasters of both the Theatrical Cut and the 2005 Alternate Version of the film sourced from the original camera negative, supervised by Arrow Films and approved by director Walter Hill. In fact, the theatrical cut has never been in the correct aspect ratio before.

Inside limited edition packaging with a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Laurie Greasley, you get a double-sided poster of that art, six postcard-sized reproduction ar tcards, gang logo stickers and a 100-page perfect-bound collector’s book containing new writing by film critic Dennis Cozzalio.

There’s new audio commentary for the theatrical cut by film critic Walter Chaw, author of A Walter Hill Film, a new interview with Hill in which he’s quite honest about the film and how much others contributed, a roundtable discussion between Josh Olson (A History of Violence), Lexi Alexander (Green Street) and Robert D. Kryzkowski (The Man Who Killed Hitler and then Bigfoot) discuss their love of The Warriors and the work of director Walter Hill, new interviews with editor Billy Weber and costume designer Bobbie Mannix — which is worth the price of this set, as she explains how she outfitted all of the gangs, as well as another feature that shows all of the actual work — as well as an appreciate of the score, that score isolated from sound design, a new look at the film locations and archival extras.

If you love film, you owe it to yourself to own this.

You can get the 4K UHD and blu ray from MVD.

Al Adamson should have never made a children’s film. This is the man who made Psycho a Go-Go, two different softcore movies with flying hostesses (The Naughty Stewardesses and Blazing Stewardesses), the staggering Dracula vs. Frankenstein and a Filipino horror movie that was dubbed, tinted in neon hues and released as Horror of the Blood Monsters. And oh, by the way, his film Satan’s Sadists was shot Spahn Ranch and he was not shy about using that fact to promote the film. And how can we forget his rip off of Eddie Romero’s Blood Island films, the impressive Brain of Blood?

But yeah. So then he decided to make a movie for the kids, it failed, he went into real estate and then ended up murdered by a contractor and buried in the cement under a new hot tub.

So are you ready for Carnival Magic? No. I really don’t think you are.

According to an article in the Austin Chronicle, even the way that film was discovered is unsettling. Alamo Drafthouse programmer Zack Carlson said, “I didn’t know about the movie until I already owned it. It was an entire movie on one giant reel, and written on the side of it, in Sharpie, it said Carnival Fucking Magic. It completely decimated everyone. We couldn’t understand what the movie was, because although it’s made under the guise of a children’s film, it features domestic abuse, vivisection, and, even more uncomfortably, it just has this pervasive air of stale, alcoholic uncles. It’s the most quietly inappropriate kids’ movie ever made. You can tell it was made by people who have never spent any time around children.”

At face value, the movie is all about Markov the Magnificent (Don Stewart, who was on the soap opera Guiding Light for sixteen years), a magician and mindreader whose career has hit the skids. However, when he teams up with a talking chimp — after a while, no one is really all that amazed that monkeys can speak — named Alexander the Great, their dirt poor Stoney Martin Carnival finally has a chance to be a success. Then again, Kirk the alcoholic lion tamer (Joe Cirillo, who played cops in everything from Maniac Cop 2 to Splash, Ghostbusters and Death Wish 3) and the doctor who wants to examine Alexander’s brain may screw it all up.

Of course, Al’s wife Regina Carrol shows up. But what you don’t expect is that the monkey loves women’s bras and stealing cars. You might wonder what child would want to see this or how they’d react being dropped off at the theater in 1981 by their parents and having to confront this film. I’m in my forties and barely survived it with my insanity intact (to be fair, I’ve gone back more than a few times to try and watch it again).

See, there’s a war brewing between Markov and Kirk. Our hero doesn’t like telling many people, but he was raised by Buddhist monks who taught him hypnosis, levitation and how to talk to animals. The main problem is, the more he talks to Kirk’s animals, the less they take our villain as their master.

Speaking of talking, that’s pretty much all this movie does. Everyone talks, about losing their wives, potentially losing their daughters, leaving behind their old lives and worries of their future. I’m not really sure what children want to see the inner workings and turmoil of a ratty circus. After all, we’ve all come to realize just how sinister the big top is and this movie will do nothing to dissuade you from that notion.

I really have no idea who this film is really for. But yet, that’s part of the charm. Every year, there are so many movies made for kids that just fade away. Somehow, this oddity won’t go away, even if the print for it stayed hidden for decades. Beyond all rational reasoning, Carnival Magic is available to watch on Netflix — albeit with riffing from Mystery Science Theater 3000 — and ready to mess with anyone’s brain that stumbles across it.

You can get this from Severin.

This is one of the many movies in which Independent-International used comic book artist Gray Morrow to do the art for the posters. He also did the poster and sales art for Brain of Blood, Cinderella 2000, Dracula vs. Frankenstein, Nurse Sherri, Five Bloody Graves, Blazing Stewardesses and Dynamite Brothers.

This film, produced by Sam Sherman and remixed by Al Adamson, was once Captain Roughneck from St. Pauli, which was directed and written by Rolk Olsen. In that movie, Captain Jolly (Curd Jurgens) and his men have been hired to smuggle a vaccine within a shipment of booze. When government officials try to take that booze from him, he destroys it and the vaccine gets stolen, which gets him blamed for taking it. There are also some nurses — they had to come in somewhere — kidnapped in the jungle.

It’s a little over an hour long and the new material from Adamson has some of the nurses making out. One of them is Swedish model Lenka Novak, who is also in Moonshine County Express, Coach, The Great American Girl Robbery, Vampire Hookers and was one of the Catholic high school girls in trouble in The Kentucky Fried Movie.