Spagvemberfest 2023: Those Dirty Dogs (1973)

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Those Dirty Dogs is also known as Campa carogna… la taglia cresce, Los cuatro de Fort Apache and Charge! It’s late in the Italian Western genre, so it has the slapstick ingredients of other latter cowboy films. It also has a song, “The Wind in My Face,” that was written by star Stephen Boyd and composer Nico Fidenco. Boyd even sings it.

Captain Chadwell Williams (Boyd), Lieutenant Junger Kohl (Howard Ross) and Sergeant Washington Smith (Harry Baird) have been assigned to get back the hundreds of rifles that Angel Sanchez (Simón Andreu) has stolen. They’re joined by Korano (Gianni Garko), a bounty hunter who carries a pink umbrella and the Koran.

It’s a weird cocktail here because fight scenes have sound effects and slaps, while the film starts off with a brutal massacre by Angel and his gang. And Sanchez isn’t even the main villain. That’s the general, played by Alfredo Mayo. He’s not frightening at all, so we start to realize that this is a post-Trinity Italian Western. At least Garko is still kind of Sartana here, having a machine gun hidden inside his umbrella.

But hey — I’ll watch anything Helga Liné is in. And this also has Teresa Gimpera (The People Who Own the Dark) and Gabriella Giorgelli (the mother of Lou Ferrigno’s Hercules) are in the cast.

It has a pretty great tagline on the poster: “The preacher of death who calls himself a follower of Mohammed; The virile Mexican revolutionary to whom every married woman is his to take; The insane General who believes he is Napoleon, destined to conquer America … and Chadwell – the dirtiest of them all!” And you know, at least a hundred people get killed, so if you’re into the more violent side of the Italian West — along with some hijinks — you’ll find something to enjoy.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Hercules the Invincible (1964)

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Ercole l’invincibile came to American audiences as Son of Hercules in the Land of Darkness. Of these thirteen movies in the Embassy Pictures package offered to TV channels, two had Hercules, none had his children Alexiares, Anicetus, Telephus, Hyllus and Tlepolemus, and four were Maciste movies.

Ercole, or Hercules, is played by Dan Vadis, a former U.S. Navy sailor and bodybuilder who was a member of the Mae West “Muscleman Revue.” He had already played Hercules in The Triumphs of Hercules and after these movies, moved into Westerns, the films of Clint Eastwood and finished his career in Seven Magnificent Gladiators.

After saving Telca (Spela Rozin, Strange Girls) from a lion, her father Kabol (Ken Clark) offers her hand in marriage if he gets a dragon’s tooth for him. That tooth is impossible to pull out unless the dragon is dead, but a witch (Olga Solbelli) claims she can help make a spear. But that tooth has magic that only works once and the witch also wants the tooth. There is also a tribe of cannibals who eat hearts called the Demulus, led by Ella (Carla Calo).

Director Alvaro Mancori was also the cinematographer of the peplum horror crossover Goliath and the Vampires. He used the name Al World here and in the only other movie he made, the anthology The Double Bed, he was Al Wood.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Hercules and the Captive Women (1961)

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Known elsewhere as Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis, this is the film debut of Reg Park as Hercules, or Ercole as he’s referred to in the Italian title (Ercole alla Conquista di Atlantide).

Directed by Vittorio Cottafavi, this had a complete retitle, re-edit and rescore* — as well as a title design by Filmation — before playing in America.

Strange things are happening in Greece, but Hercules — now married to Deianira with a son named Hylas — is content and comfortable with his family life. However, his son feels the call to adventure that his father once did.

That means that Androcles must take matters into his own hands, drug Hercules and take him on his ship as Hylas stows away. After refusing to take part in heroics, Hercules finally consents and battles a god named Proteus and rescues a princess of Atlantis.

But man, Atlantis is messed up. They plan on murdering the princess to keep the fog that hides them from the rest of the world. They also have this weird ritual where children are taken from their parents and forced to touch a stone made from the blood of Uranus that either transforms them into blonde-haired superhumans or makes them mutants that are cast into the pit. With an army of these Aryan-looking demigods, Queen Antinea (Fay Spain, who somehow has shown up in both this movie and William Gréfe’s The Naked Zoo) plans on conquering the universe.

The only way to stop all of this? Hercules has to tear the top of a cave off and blow up Atlantis real good. Of course, none of this has anything to do with the real myth of Hercules, but such is Italian cinema.

I read that Hercules exemplifies the characteristics of sprezzatura, or studied carelessness, or even the ability to do something extremely well without showing that it took any effort. That’s an intriguing way to look at him, especially as until midway through this, he really wants nothing to do with anything, but by the end, he’s willing to die for the men he has journeyed with and his son, who has found his way to the pit filled with the castoffs of Atlantis’ Faustian bargain with the gods.

You can download this from the Internet Archive or watch it on YouTube. The Mystery Science Theater 3000 version is also available on Tubi.

*There is a noticeable steal from Creature of the Black Lagoon in the American music.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964)

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I love when a film series sticks around long enough to battle aliens. Hercules is no different, as now he must battle the evil Queen Samara (Jany Clair, Planets Against Us)  and her army of Moon Men, who demand that children be sacrificed to bring back their dead leader.

Hercules is played by Sergio Ciani, who used the stage name Alan Steel. He got his start doubling for Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained and The Giant of Marathon. His run of seven Hercules films is filled with crazy situations to keep the peblu genre alive, such as Hercules and the Masked Rider, which had a Zorro theme, and Hercules and the Treasure of the Incas, which started as a sword and sandal movie and became a western after A Fistful of Dollars became a major hit during filming.

If you’re expecting this movie to be true to its mythological origins, you should know that it borrows from Roman, Greek, Ancient Egyptian and Cretan stories, as well as even soem Edgar Rice Burroughs. In Italy, Steel really playing Maciste, who was a star of silent Italian cinema, but American distributors changed him to Hercules.

Look, it’s Hercules against moon men with giant heads. You should be so lucky.

Don’t have the box set? You can watch this on Tubi to download this from the Internet Archive.

MILL CREEK SCI-FI CLASSICS: Giants of Rome (1964)

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A handpicked group of soldiers — by Julius Caesar, no less! — must break into the druid stronghold to locate and destroy the secret weapon that could help them win the Battle of Alesia. They are centurion Claudius Marcellus (Richard Harrison, not yet in the world of Godfrey Ho), Germanicus (Ralph Hudson, who was only in one other movie, Ape Man of the Jungle), knife thrower Varus (Goffredo Unger) and Castor (Ettore Manni, who hits all the various genre of Italian exploitation cinema from this peplum to westerns like For a Few Extra Dollars, poliziotteschi like Calling All Police Cars, giallo such as A.A.A. Massaggiatrice bella presenza offresi… and even is in Fellini’s City of Women and Bava’s Rabid Dogs). They are joined by the young Valerius (Alberto Dell’Acqua, who is in a ton of westerns as well as Zombi), who wants to be a soldier like all of them.

They are captured and placed in a cell next to noblewoman Livilla (Wandisa Guida, Miss Cinema of 1954, who is also in I Vampiri) and her bodyguard Drusus (Philippe Hersent, So Sweet, So Dead) whose spirit has been destroyed by the tortures of the terrifying druid Vercingetorix (Renato Baldini, Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why?). He tries to do the same thing to Claudius Mercellus, threatening him with heated metal, and the centurion just picks it up and burns his own chest with it. Man, these guys are tough. Anything to find that catapult, right? Even if the kid has to die.

This movie was directed by Anthony Dawson, whose name I love to say because he’s really Antonio Margheriti. This was written by the always busy Ernesto Gastaldi along with Arlette Combret and producer Luciano Martino.

As the genres go in fashion in Italy from sword and sandal to westerns, the final films of the glory days of peplum begin to give way to other films and be inspired by them. This could be a war movie other than the costumes.

You can watch this on Tubi.

WILD EYE BLU RAY RELEASE: Caddy Hack (2023)

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The caddies of Old Glory Holes Golf Club are being killed off. Welles Landon (Jim Gordon), the owner, doesn’t want his members to have to see death. There’s also a big tournament coming and the murders would get in the way. Hopefully, personal assistant Ms. Flannager (Ilene Sullivan) and groundskeeper Hambone (Nick Twist) can stop whatever is happening.

Hambone might be the reason behind all of this terror. His new lawn spray has turned the once nice and cuddly gophers into human-mesticating monsters. Maybe Landon can build a wall and get the gophers to pay for it.

We’ll remember the partying caddies — Smitty (John Evans), Hoh Boy (Dave Lavelle), Dim (David Olsen Jr.), Fingers (Travis Frank) and Biggles (Mike Paquin) — that have lost their lives so that these gophers can party and sneak into convenience stores in trenchcoats to get beer with a fake ID.

Some may watch this movie and think how goofy it all is. They have such a small worldview and should not be trusted. You should not watch a movie with them. I bet they never played putt putt ever. Get new friends and watch this movie a lot.

The Wild Eye blu ray of this movie has director and producer commentary, behind the scenes footage, an Old Glory Holes commercial, Caddy Hack Rap, Balls Deep Karaoke, Brew Break Drinking Game, a slipcase and a folded poster. You can get it from Diabolik DVD.

Spagvemberfest 2023 : Face to Face (1967)

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Known in the UK as High Plains Killer and in Germany as Hallelujah, The Devil Sends His Regards, Face to Face is the second of three Italian Westerns by Sergio Sollima. He also made Violent City and Devil in the Brain. It was written by two Sergios, Sollima and Donati, who also scripted Orca, Almost Blue and Holocaust 2000.

In the time after the Civil War, Civil War, Brad Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonté, who was in A Bullet for the General, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More) quits his job teaching history at Boston University. His tuberculosis would do better in Texas, he thinks, and he makes his way out West. As the movie begins, he’s a liberal — Volonté was an extreme left wing activist — who thinks violence has no meaning. Then he meets the criminal Solomon “Beauregard” Bennet (Tomas Milian). When he tries to give the man a drink, he’s captured and taken into a hideout in the middle of nowhere.

There, he learns how to shoot a gun as Bennett recovers from his injuries. Instead of finally going back to Boston, he soon is part of the gang, along with Charley Siringo (William Berger), Aaron Chase (José Torres), Jason (Frank Baña) and Vance (Nello Pazzafini). He even kills a man to save Bennet.

They’re joined by Maximillian de Winton (Ángel del Pozo) and stay in Puerto de Fuego, a world of no laws, criminals and outsiders. As the gang leaves for a train robbery, Fletcher stays behind and has an affair with Vance’s woman Maria (Jolanda Modio). When the gang comes back, Fletcher kills Vance in self-defense.

Fletcher also starts to take over the gang, setting up a robbery dressed as everyday folks that gets spoiled when a kid recognizes Bennett. At that point, Charley reveals that he’s a lawman and kills Jason, Maximillian and Aaron. He also captures Bennett and only Fletcher and Maria escape. She dies and he goes mad due to all the death — Maria and the kid who fingered Bennett — and betrayal. He transforms the somewhat oasis of Puerto del Fuego into a wretched hive of scum and villainy that has a posse led by Zachary Shawn (Aldo Sanbrell) coming to town to kill everyone. Bennett gets there too late to stop them.

By the final scene, the good man has become a criminal and the gunfighter has started to atone for his past. That said, they have to get through an entire posse if either of them is going to survive, as well as deal with Charley. I love that Bennett is around violence all the time and it’s become a habit while Fletcher comes to learn that his brains, when combined with a willingness to do horrible things, can make him stronger and wealthier than he was back East. The West changes them both.

That’s beyond obvious when Fletcher kills another turncoat, tying him to a cross and putting a gun to his head, blasting his brains out without a thought. Obviously, his illness is no longer bothering him.

Sollima used his experiences in fighting with the anti-fascist resistance in World War II to make this movie, remembering how he saw children be brave and adult men be cowards. He also pushed his actors by using their real-life differences. Volontè was a Communist and Milian left Cuba when Castro took control. He also made them box one another before shooting.

ARROW VIDEO BLU RAY RELEASE: The Iron-Fisted Monk (1977)

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The first movie directed by Sammo Hung, The Iron-Fisted Monk begins when the title character (Chan Sing) sends Hawker (Sammo Hung) to the Shaolin temple. He tries to run away, as the master (James Tien) is too rough, but is found and undergoes four tests. While he’s continuing to train, he’s wrongly accused of assaulting the sister of Llang (Lo Hoi-pang) when, in truth, it’s really a Manchurian official (Fung Hak-on) who believes that he is above the law.

By the end, Hawker has redeemed himself by teaching the dye factory workers kung fu, even if they all die at the hands of the Manchu. Man, those guys are horrifying, because they also assault and kill Llang’s wife, murder his mother and end up killing him. Can Hawker and the Iron-Fisted Monk get revenge for, well, just about everyone else in this movie?

Sammo Hung always inspires me. Not just because he’s a larger individual who is still so graceful, but because his movies always have so much well-filmed and planned action, as well as an actual plot that keeps me watching.

The Arrow Video blu ray of The Iron-Fisted Monk has a 2K restoration from original film elements by Fortune Star. It has commentary by martial arts cinema expert Frank Djeng, interviews with Hung and Wong, a trailer, new art by Gary Mills on the sleeve and poster, and a collector’s book. You can get it from MVD.

KINO LORBER BLU RAY RELEASE: Hardcore (1979)

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I’ve been thinking about Hardcore since I watched it.

The weird thing is, I can honestly say that I disliked nearly everyone in this movie except for one character yet I am still a fan of this movie.

Director and writer Paul Schrader partly based the story on his own experience growing up in the Calvinist church in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he studied theology at Calvin College. Calvinism is a Protestant faith that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Calvin and is steadfast in the belief of the sovereignty of God and the authority of the Bible.

As explained in the movie — and with help from Learn Religions — Calvin based his theology on the Bible alone. The five points that the church lives by is summarized by the world TULIP, which means T- Total Depravity, U – Unconditional Election, L – Limited Atonement, I – Irresistible Grace and P – Persistence of the Saints. In short, sin pervades all areas of life and human existence. People cannot independently choose God or save themselves. Only God can intervene and do all the work. God also chooses who will be saved. Those are the Elect, who God has selected not on merit, but out of his kindness and sovereign will. It also means that election for salvation is not based on God’s foreknowledge of who would come to faith in the future. Since some are chosen for salvation, others are not. Those not chosen are the damned to Hell for all eternity. And when Jesus died, he didn’t die for all of mankind but just foe the Elect (there are four point Calvinism that believes that Jesus did die for all men). Finally, Calvinism teaches that the Elect cannot lose their salvation.

You have to understand that or at least get your head around it to understand some of this.

Back to Pauil Schrader.

After writing Taxi Driver, he worked with executive producer John Milius at Warner Bros. until Warren Beatty came on. He clashed with Schrader, as he wanted the story to change so that he was searching for his girlfriend and not a daughter. Warren Beatty couldn’t be old.

George C. Scott could be.

He played Jake Van Dorn, a businessman from Grand Rapids, Michigan — you can spot Schrader’s childhood school and parents in these scenes — who is a Calvinist. When his daughter Kristen (lah Davis) goes missing at Knott’s Berry Farm, he gets help from Andy Mast (Peter Boyle), a private detective in Los Angeles, to find her after she’s been missing for several weeks.

Five weeks later, Mast brings him some news. Calling him Pilgrim, he has rented an adult theater to show Jake a loop of his daughter in an adult film called Slave of Love. Now calling herself Joanne, it appears that Jake has lost his little girl.

But he won’t let her go easily.

Following Mast to Los Angeles and throwing him out of the home he’s been paying for, Jake pretends that he’s a porn producer, beating everyone he finds nearly to death. Everyone except Niki (Season Hubley), a sex worker and adult star who promises to help him. Their relationship is strange. She listens intently while he discusses religion but compares it to being sold on bestiality by a client. Yet it’s intriguing that she’s the first person he can open up to about his wife leaving and she feels safe around a man that doesn’t see her just for sex. She says that he doesn’t see any need for sex so it’s not a big deal while she can have sex with anyone and it’s not a big deal, so they have something in common.

He says they have nothing in common.

By the end of the movie, Jake has gone deep into the underworld of pornography which, predictably, has snuff movies and has his daughter dating the creator of those movies. There’s a gun battle and Jake finds his daughter who tells her she did everything on her own and no one forced her to do anything. She refuses to go home with him and he breaks down, which changes her mind. I found the end of this movie really artificial in that she gives in so easily. No one has learned anything, as Jake had to basically beat Niki to get what he wanted from her. But he’s saved. She won’t ever be.

I was mad, at the end, because she felt like he would be the person to take her away from all this. There’s a look between them and she’s smarter than anyone else in the film. She realizes she’s been lied to again, lied to by religion that she almost believed in and she walks away. Jake wonders if there was some way he could pay her. But if he got his daughter back, he lost the faith of perhaps the one honest person in this entire film.

Also, her Rorer 714 shirt is incredible.

The story originally had Scott’s character discover that his daughter has been killed in a totally unrelated car crash. He feels like this choice messed up the ending.

This is one of those movies that exposes porn and yet has no idea what the industry is. Marilyn Chambers auditioned and the casting director said she was too wholesome to be cast as a porn queen. 99 44/100% pure, right? They were looking for something fake, not the reality of what existed.

Speaking of real life, George C. Scott and Schrader did not get along, so much that at one point Scott refused to come out of his trailer and threatened to quit the film. Scott told Schrader that he was a good writer, a terrible director and “this movie is a piece of shit.” Supposedly, he only agreed to come out after forcing Schrader to promise that he would never direct again.

The first meeting between the director and his star should have let him know what he was in for. Scott never showed up but he was found in a bar. Schrader said, “George came out, and he was just wearing his undershorts, and he saw me in the distance and says “Where’s that cocksucker who thinks he can direct?” At which point I said “That would be me George.””

The Kino Lorber blu ray release of this movie has two commentaries, one by director and writer Paul Schrader and the other by film historians Eddy Friedfeld, Lee Pfeiffer and Paul Scrabo. You can get it from Kino Lorber.

SURVIVING ELEMENTS AND DIABOLIK DVD BLU RAY RELEASE: Haunted Samurai (1970)

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When the sales copy for the movie promises “the most gory ninja film of its era,” you know I’m going to be ready for it. Haunted Samurai is based on the works of Goseki Kojima, the artist behind Lone Wolf and Cub.

Rokuheita Kusanagi (Hideki Takahashi) is given the toughest assignments by his master Yojiro. He must track down deserters to his clan and kill them in battle, such as his brother-in-law. In the aftermath of that success, his sister hangs herself. Now, he must find another deserter, one with a wife and child. He decides that he has had enough and he becomes the one that is hunted. There’s a killer a lot like him named Kyonosuke (Isao Natsuyagi) and in the movie’s wildest moment, an entire army of topless female ninjas who rise out of the water in a fight that sees women spitting daggers and a swordfight underwater.

As an eclipse comes closer, Kusanagi tries to become a farmer and forget the bloody past. It will never go away and he’s always seconds away from being discovered and having to kill again. You can’t escape the past, at least in samurai film.

Directed by Keiichi Ozawa, I didn’t find this lived up to the levels of gore promised, but I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t care. This is a great looking movie and a really fun release. I look forward to seeing what Surviving Elements has coming out after this.

The Surviving Elements and Diabolik DVD release of this movie comes in a limited slipcover with art by Vanessa McKee, commentary by film historians Chris Poggiali and John Charles, and a trailer. It’s only being made once, so get it now at Diabolik DVD.