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 Unchainedand 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.
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.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Terror In the Crypt was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 7, 1967 at 1:00 a.m. It also appeared on November 21, 1970.
La cripta e l’incubo was released in the U.S. on TV by American-International Pictures and retitled Terror In the Crypt. The script was called La maledizione dei Karnstein and Ernesto Gastaldi said that he wrote it in a day. It’s based on Carmilla and is the third adaption of that book after Vampyr and Blood and Roses.
Antonio Margheriti was the intended director but was busy, so Camillo Mastrocinque, who usually made comedies, directed. He also directed An Angel for Satan. He was helped by co-writer and assistant director Tonino Valerii, who would direct some great Westerns like The Price of Power, Day of Anger and My Name Is Nobody as well as the giallo My Dear Killer.
Count Von Karnstein (Christopher Lee) claims that his family is cursed and the next victim is his daughter Laura (Adriana Ambesi). She keeps dreaming of horrific scenes where she finds people with all of the blood drained out of their bodies.
That’s because Sira Von Karnstein, one of their ancestors, was killed for being a witch which has led to the family suffering for centuries. The maid conducts a ritual — with a hand of glory created from the body of a lynched and decapitated dwarf — that brings back Sira just in time for another girl to show up named Lyuba (Ursula Davis) and the murders — and an obsession between Laura and the young lady — to really begin.
This may start to feel like a cover version of some of your Italian gothic horror favorites — fog, skeletons, a woman being put to death and cursing everyone, white gowns barely covering gorgeous Italian women — but those are some pretty awesome things to bring back. I’m for all of it, including Christopher Lee as the hero.
26. ANY WITCH WAY YOU CAN: Cast your eyes upon a spellbinder.
Adele Karnstein (Halina Zalewska, An Angel for Satan) is accused of witchcraft and burned, but really it’s because she wouldn’t sleep with Count Humboldt (Giuliano Raffaelli). When her daughter Helen (Barbara Steele) confronts him, she even offers her body to him to save her mother. The Count still watches as her mother is burned alive and tosses Helen off a cliff. To add even more pain to the Karnestein family, her sister Lisabeth (also Halina Zalewska) is taken in by Humboldt and eventually married to his nephew Kurt (George Ardisson).
As a plague destroys the country, a storm blows in on the night of the Count’s death, bringing Mary (also Barbara Steele) who inspires Kurt to kill his wife and be with her. Bad idea Kurt. This is an Italian Gothic and all men are morons who must be destroyed by the female ghosts of past tragedy and the curses of mothers whose daughters could not save them.
I mean, Barbara Steele is a ghost whose skeleton is reanimated by lightning. Can movies get any more magical? Do you know how much it makes me fall into a dream of movie drugs to have Steele walking through a cobwebbed castle in a white nightgown holding blazing candles?
While written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Tonino Valerii, neither had enough experience to direct — or so said producer Felice Testa Gay — which brought in Antonio Margheriti to make the film. For as much as Margheriti is known for his miniature-rich war movies, he had a talent for making movies like this. Just check out Castle of Blood, The Virgin of Nuremberg, The Unnaturals and Web of the Spider (which is the first film on this list but in color and without Steele).
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: Hail Satan
Co-directed by Antonio Margheriti and Sergio Corbucci (yes, the same man who made Super Fuzz), this was originally going to be directed by Sergio’s brother Bruno. Due to a scheduling conflict, Margheriti came in and Sergio did one scene to keep things moving.
Producer Giovanni Addessi had commissioned Sergio to create a film that would reuse the medieval sets from The Monk of Monza. Meanwhile, even though she had done Fellini’s 8 1/2 and wanted to not be seen as strictly a horror actress, assistant director Ruggero Deodato talked Barbara Steele into being in this film.
After he meets Edgar Allan Poe, reporter Alan Foster (Georges Rivière) says that all of the author’s books came not from reality but instead his imagination. ord Thomas Blackwood (Umberto Raho) asks if he’d like to see the supernatural and invites him to spend the night in his castle. Moments after he arrives, he learns that Elisabeth (Steele) gets one night a year to spend with someone. Tonight is that night. They make love and as he lies his head on her chest, she says, “My heart doesn’t beat – it hasn’t for ten years. I’m dead.”
They aren’t alone. Her sister Julia (Margarete Robsahm) is also there and seems angry that Alan and Elisabeth have fallen in love. The past is revealed to Foster that Elisabeth was once married and fell in love with a stable boy before being killed. And Julia’s jealousy is not for Alan, but the fact that she’s been in love with Elisabeth all this time. Oh yes — if Alan doesn’t escape, his blood will be used in a dark occult ritual to bring every ghost back from the dead and into our world.
This was released in Italy as Danse Macabre and even has a French version where Steele’s character appears nude. It’s not her, but instead actress Sylvia Sorrente.
Margheriti decided to remake this seven years later as Web of the Spider with Klaus Kinski as Poe, Michèle Mercier as Elisabeth and Anthony Franciosa as Alan. He would later say that he was “stupid to remake it” and that “the color cinematography destroyed everything: the atmosphere, the tension.”
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: The undead
Also known as War of the Zombies, Rome Against Rome was the second to last film from the Galatea production company (some of their other films include Black Sunday, Black Sabbath, Mill of the Stone Women and Ghosts of Rome). It was directed by Giuseppe Vari, who used the name Joseph Warren, and also made The Last Killer, Shoot the Living and Pray for the Dead, Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why?, Sister Emanuelle and Urban Warriors. Its story came from Ferruccio De Martino (who usually was a production manager) and Massimo De Rita (Violent City, The Valachi Papers, Street Law) with a script from Piero Pierotti (who directed Hercules Against Rome and Marco Polo) and Marcello Sartarelli.
In a remote part of the Roman Empire, cult leader Aderbad (John Drew Barrymore, Drew’s father) is working with the governor to create their own land using the corpses of Roman soldiers brought back from the dead. Centurion Gaius (Ettore Manni) is sent to protect the interests of the senate.
American-International Pictures played this movie as a double feature with Senkichi Taniguchi’s Samurai Pirate, which they named The Lost World of Sinbad. When it was time for Rome Against Rome to air on TV, it was renamed the completely incredible title Night Star: Goddess of Electra.
I wish that there was more to recommend this movie than just as a curiosity. Peplum was giving way to the western, so anything was being tried at this point. According to Mondo Esoterica, two other horror and sandal hybrids are Goliath and the Vampires and, of course, Hercules in the Haunted World.
Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.
Today’s theme: 1960s
Director and writer Gino Mangini claimed that he wrote hundreds of movies, but IMDB lists 21. There’s a lot of peplum on that list, as well as a very late in the day mondo, Mondo cane 2000 – L’incredibile, which was made in 1988 and directed by Gabriele Crisanti, the producer of Giallo In Venice, Burial Ground and Patrick Still Lives, three of the grimiest movies ever allowed to escape the camera. Oh yeah, he also produced Gesichter des Todes V. That’s right. The bootleg German Faces of Death 5.
1883 London: Martin “The Hyena” Bauer has been strangling people for three years before Scotland Yard finally brings him to the gallows. Except that his body disappears from the morgue and the killings start all over again.
Dr. Edward Dalton (Giotto Tempestini) believes that the killer is back from the grave, but he’s also dealing with his daughter Muriel (Patrizia Del Frae) dating a man not right for her named Henry Quinn (Luciano Stella who you know better as Tony Kendall). No problem, because Dalton’s assistant Dr. Anthony Finney (Angelo Dessy) frames Henry for the killings. But ahh…what if Dalton had been putting pieces of Bauer’s brain into his own and transferred the need to kill to himself?
I thought this was going to be an early giallo and it’s quite nearly a soap opera. But hey — the ending! What kind of bullshit science is that? Oh, Italian exploitation bullshit science.
The Francesco De Masi score for this movie was taken from Riccardo Freda’s The Ghost and would return again for Joe D’Amato’s Beyond the Darkness. And hey! There’s Luciano Pigozzi in the cast!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This weekend is the Drive-In Super Monster-Rama! Get more info at the official Drive-In Super Monster-Rama Facebook page and get your tickets at the Riverside Drive-In’s webpage.
It takes a certain kind of genius — or maniac — to make a gore drenched version of Brigadoon. I was explaining this movie to someone and said that the main reason why I like it so much is the completely joyful way in which the townsfolk of Pleasant Valley go about their murderous rampage. This is the time of their lives — well, post-death lives — and it’s worth hollering and singing and shouting about.
Shot over two weeks in the small Florida town of St. Cloud — not yet a cog in the omnipotent wheel of the Disney vacation empire yet — and featuring the gleeful participation of nearly every citizen in that sleepy community, this movie established the danger of the South to North audiences, a theme that would reach its creative apex in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Yankee tourists, made up of the Millers, the Wells and unmarried folks Tom White and Terry Adams (Lewis’ muse, if he ever had one and only because he never sliced off one of her limbs or cut out her tongue, Connie Mason) have followed the detours to Pleasant Valley where they’re the guests of honor for the centennial celebration.
Yes, a hundred years ago, the Union troops marched through the town and killed every man, woman and child. What a thing to celebrate!
The town’s mayor, Joseph Buckman (Taalkeus Blank, who used the name Jeffery Allen, could do such a Southern accent that Lewis would also use him in Moonshine Mountain, This Stuff’ll Kill Ya! and Year of the Yahoo!), and the townspeople show everyone great hospitality at first, but before you can say Mason-Dixon Line they’re slicing off their guests body parts, drawing and quartering them, getting rolled down the hill in a nail-filled barrel, having rocks dropped on them and all other manner of grisly crowd pleasing hijinks.
After kidnapping little Billy, Terry and Tom make it out of town and come back with the police, only to discover that the town never existed. When they leave, the townspeople return and wonder what the world will be like when they come back in 2065 before disappearing into the fog.
This was Lewis’ favorites of his films and he even published a tie-in paperback version of the story.
Yes, that’s Herschell Gordon Lewis singing the theme song, too. You have to admire his dedication to filmmaking. This was produced by David F. Friedman, who met up with Kroger Babb before a career that has everything from nudie cuties and roughies to gore and Naziploitation, which he produced under the name Herman Traeger.
More movies should be like Two Thousand Maniacs!, but so few have the gumption to even try.
Here’s the drink I’m bringing to the drive-in for this movie.
Pleasant Valley Dew
4 oz. Mountain Dew
2 oz. moonshine
,5 oz. triple sec
2 oz. pineapple juice
2 oz. orange juice
2 oz. pomegranate juice
Pour it all in a shaker with ice and shake it like it’s a Yankee in a barrel.
Pour and savor all that booze.
Can’t make it to the drive-in? You can watch Two Thousand Maniacs! on Tubi.
It’s so strange to see a restrained Renato Polselli. But soon enough, he’d have literal insanity on the screen and we’d all be there for every moment. Until then, there’s this dramatic film in which a woman has her husband’s estate taken, him thrown out of their house and gets custody of their two children. The man flees to Italy with the children and fights for his rights, which is ahead of its time for 1964.
It was written by its star, Vincenzo Cascino, who also made7 Golden Women Against Two 07, Le sette cinesi d’oro and produced Polselli’s The Sheriff Won’t Shoot. Polselli would often find himself working with actors who either wrote or produced their own films.
Cascino plays Lorenzo, an Argentinian industrialist married — and not happily — to Erika (Lisa Gastoni). Working with her lawyer Emilio Bernasconi (Umberto D’Orsi), she gets him in a sleazy takedown with another woman, seizes the estate and takes their children. For some reason, Lorenzo starts hearing voices in his head and, this being a Polselli movie, much of the film is given to jazz music parties with women dancing, including Solvi Stubing (Strip Nude for Your Killer), Annie Gorassini (Danger: Diabolik) and Gloria Paul (3 Supermen a Tokyo).
The suggested eroticism of The Vampire and the Ballerina was amped up in Polselli’s quasi-sequel, which was a troubled production started in 1961 and was not released until three years later, it was started as Il vampiro dell’opera (The Vampire of the Opera) and once box office fortunes changed against vampires, the name was slightly altered. Along with Piero Regnoli’s L’ultima preda del vampire (The Playgirls and the Vampire), even more eroticism was added to the bloodsucking. Of course, Gastaldi also wrote all three of these movies, even if he demurred that they were movies similar to others he wrote, only with vampires.
The difference in the few years in between movies is that now the dancers may embrace and even have a timid kiss between one another. Those that devour Polselli’s later films will giggle a bit at this; no corncob penetration here. For 1964, it had to be pretty titillating. So is the opening, in which the monstrous fiend in the opera chases a woman in a nightgown who is carrying the much-needed candelabra until he stabs her with a pitchfork.
Sandro (Marco Mariani) is the leader of an experimental dance group with Giulia (Barbara Hawards) as the star. Soon they are attacked by the titular bad guy, Stefano (Giuseppe Addobatti), and his five vampire wives. The human victims must keep dancing to battle Stefano’s psychic attacks and the suggestions he’s put inside their minds to stay within his crumbling theater.
Polselli’s later films aren’t just insane. They look that way as he never stops moving the camera. That starts happening here as well and I can’t get enough of this movie. Let that fog flow in, chain those vampire women to the wall and let’s dance.
You can watch this on Tubi or buy it on the Severin Danza Macabra: The Italian Gothic Collection Volume 1 set.
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