John Duncombe (Anthony Quayle), the British consul in Florence, has come home from his wife’s funeral and makes the decision to tell his son Andrea (Stefano Colagrande) that his mother is dead. He hides the truth from his other son, Milo (Simone Giannozzi). 

Andrea has to become a grown-up well before he should, while Milo is allowed to be a child and can act has badly as he wants. As for their father, he becomes absent from their lives until it is almost too late.

Director Luigi Comencini understands the time that exists and is so fragile between being a child and an adult. He shows how all three of these men navigate this loss in their own ways. It’s a really dramatic film that made me consider how I went from a child to a grown-up and how my father made his journey as well.

This was remade in 1984 as Misunderstood with Gene Hackman in the lead role.

The Radiance Films blu ray of Misunderstood has a 2K restoration from the original negative, as well as extras such as interviews with co-screenwriter Piero De Bernardi, Cristina Comencini and Michel Ciment; a visual essay by David Cairns on Comencini and the filmmaker’s affinity for childhood stories and a trailer. This limited edition of 3000 copies is presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings. There’s also a reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original promotional materials and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by critic Manuela Lazic and a newly translated archival interview with Comencini.

You can get it from MVD.

“Two Much For One Man…Russ Meyer’s Busty Buxotic Beauties … Titilating … Torrid … Untopable … Too Much For One Man!”

After going from nudies to roughies, Russ Meyer made this mondo film that explores San Francisco as well as the women who dance there in one of the first cities that permitted them to dance topless. As they show themselves to the camera, there’s a non-stop barrage of a narrator speaking, the girls being interviewed and distorted guitars.

The women who appear include Bouncy, who is Babette “44-24-38 World’s Most Sensational Exotic Entertainer” Bardot, who also appeared in Meyer’s Common Law Cabin; Pat Barrington, who was in Mantis In Lace and dated jazz musician and serial killer Melvin Rees; Lucious (Sin Lenee); Buxotic (Darlene Gray); Yummy (Diane Young); Delicious (Darla Paris); Xciting (Donna X) and footage from Europe in the Raw of Veronique Gabriel, Greta Thorwald, Denice Duval, Abundavita, Heide Richter, Gigi La Touche and Yvette Le Grand. There’s also screentest footage from Lorna of Lorna Maitland.

Pat Barrington says in this “All you’re doing is a dance – it has no meaning whatsoever” and she’s right. This is an hour and fifty-five minutes of women dancing nude in front of radios. What must a girl possess to measure up as a topless dancer? She must have a body well above the average in physical beauty – unblemished by an uneven suntan!” This is as pure a journey into what Euss Meyer wanted to see — well, he called it “crud” and made it just to make money — if he were the paying customer. I kind of enjoyed Abundavita, who has antenna of some sort. Also, Yvette LeGrand dances at the Crazy Horse and that reminds me that as dumb as Motley Crue was, they wrote “Girl, Girls, Girls” and that ensured they’d get free lap dances at every bar they mentioned (those would be the now closed Dollhouse in Ft. Lauderdale, Tattletails in Atlanta, the Seventh Veil on the Sunset Strip, Crazy Horse in Paris, the Body Shop in Hollywood, the closed Tropicana in Los Angeles and the closed Marble Arch in Vancouver).

This movie has no redeeming value unless you like to watch naked women dance next to trains. Maybe I do, you know?

Directed, written and produced by Herbert J. Leder, this is all about Nazi scientist Dr. Norberg (Dana Andrews), who has taken over an English estate and is unfreezing soldiers that have been iced up for twenty years. What he gets are zombies like his brother (Edward Fox) and Elsa (Kathleen Breck), the best friend of his niece Jean (Anna Palk), who is now a living head. His commanding officers General Lubeck (Karel Stepanek) and Captain Tirptiz (Basil Henson) have been told he’s doing a great job but all he can freeze is the body and not the brain. He brings in American scientist Ted Roberts (Philip Gilbert) to help him, a man who is not aware that there are 1,500 frozen soldiers all over the world.

How did that smart man come in, see a wall of arms and a decapitated female head that is still alive and think, “Everything seems totally fine.”

Although The Frozen Dead was shot and released in UK theaters and on U.S. TV in color, the U.S. theatrical release prints of it were released in black-and-white in order to save money. It played double features with another Leder movie, It! 

This is not the first movie I have seen where a disembodied female head just wants to die.

Daisuke Honda (Akira Kobayashi) meets stewardess Yuriko Sawanouchi (Chieko Matsubara) on a plane from Vietnam to Japan. After a date at a Tokyo nightclub, they are attacked by female ninjas. She’s kidnapped by men in trenchcoats, he’s in love and that’s all we need to get the action started.

Directed by Yasuharu Hasebe, the criminals all think that Yuriko’s father has taken gold from Okinawa at the start of the war. The ninjas want to return it to the people, the masked men want the money for themselves and Honda just wants to save the girl. Also: the female ninjas have record album weapons and spit deadly gum at people. They also have side work as go go dancers. If it sounds incredible, well, it is.

I’m so glad that Radiance released this, as I may never have seen it. It’s really something!

The Radiance Films blu ray of this movie has commentary by Jasper Sharp, an interview with director Yasuharu Hasebe, a trailer, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Time Tomorrow and a limited edition booklet featuring new writing by Japanese cinema expert Chris D. You can get it from MVD.

According to Michael Callari — who posted the YouTube video linked below — Film Ventures International began using a legal loophole while releasing movies on VHS in 1989. They took several films and created their own opening and closing credits using footage from a different movie, then claimed that the movie in between was just a clip.

Nine of the FVI movies that aired on Mystery Science 3000 used this magic trick on the legal system. They include:

• Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster
• Cave Dwellers (Ator the Blade Master)
• Pod People (Extra Terrestrial Visitors)
• Stranded In Space (The Stranger)
• Master Ninja I (The Master)
• Master Ninja II (The Master)
• Space Travelers (Marooned)
• City Limits
• Being from Another Planet (Time Walker)

Gamera Strikes Back, which FVI released on home video, also has this alteration, basing their credits off of scenes from Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster. Of course, they didn’t own that footage, so who can even say how this really was legal.

As that footage is impossible to find, Michael made this version of what he thinks it looked like:

Now, on to the movie.

Also known as War of the Monsters in the U.S. thanks to its English-language dubbing by American International Television, the second Gamera film has twice the budget of the first and realizes what they should have known all along: Gamera isn’t the villain. He’s the good guy and ready to defend children against more dangerous kaiju.

Those dumb scientists and their Z Plan rocket didn’t count on a meteorite letting Gamera escape and come back to Earth. Meanwhile, three ex-soldiers invade a cave — a scorpion kills one and treachery another — before bringing an opal to the surface. And that jewel? It’s an egg. And it’s hatching.

It becomes a lizard called Barugon, who can breathe freezing gas and launch rainbow rays from the seven spines on its back. These are all weapons that can do great damage to our turtle protector.

How do you defeat an undefeatable monster who freezes our hero again? Mirrors and drowning. Yes, Gamera straight up holds Barugon’s head under the waters of Lake Biwa.

In Germany, they screwed up the translation and call Gamera Barugon and Barugon Godzilla. Those versions are titled Godzilla, der Drache aus dem Dschungel (Godzilla, the Dragon from the Jungle), Godzilla, Monster des Grauens (Godzilla, the Monster of Horror) and Gamera vs. Godzilla.

You can watch this on Tubi and Vudu. You can also download it from the Internet Archive.

Balsorano Castle has been the location of many of my favorite movies: Lady Frankenstein, Bloody Pit of Horror, The Lickerish Quartet, The Blade Master, Black Magic Rites, The Devil’s Wedding Night, Crypt of the Vampire, The Bloodsucker Leads the Dance, Sister Emanuelle and more.

In this early giallo, it’s the home of British millionaire John Prescott, who dies at the beginning and brings together his seven potential heirs, all of whom could have killed him. They are Martha (Giovanna Galletti, the Baroness from Kill, Baby, Kill), his secretary Giacomo (Sergio Ciani, who was also Alan Steel; he started as Steve Reeves’ body double and appeared in Hercules Against the Moon Men and Samson and the Slave Queen), his mentally handicapped son Julien (Charlie Karum), nephew George (Ivano Staccioli, also known as John Heston; he’s in 3 colpi di Winchester per Ringo) and his wife Adriana (Aichè Nanà, whose dancing during a November 1958 private party at the Rugantino restaurant and nightclub on the Viale di Trastevere in Rome led to a national scandal and inspired a scene in La dolce vita), and niece Angela (Mary Arden, who not only was in Blood and Black Lace but also wrote the American dialogue) and her boyfriend Armand (Ivano Davoli).

Prescott leaves behind a recorded will in which he tells each of the gathered guests just how much he hates them. In order to get his money, they have to live together for a month. Then, only three of them can claim it, so that means that at least four people need to be killed for his plan to work.

There’s a dagger with an A in the handle that figures into many of the murders — as the U.S. title was M… for Murderer, the site Euro Fever believes that the scenes with the knife were shot twice and there was an M on the murder weapon — and despite being produced by Walter Brandi (The Vampire and the Ballerina, The Playgirls and the Vampire) and having white nightgowns and candleabras, this leans more giallo than gothic, even if it all takes place in a castle. Italian gothiciallo?

Based on an Ernesto Gastaldi play, this is a movie that even has a flashback halfway through it to show you everything you’ve already seen. Despite that, I have to admit to loving this. It was directed by Angelo Dorigo and written by Sergio Bazzini and Roberto Natale.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Today’s movie is brought to you by AC Nicholas, who has graciously become a Big B&S’er, a monthly supporter of the site and got to pick an entire week of movies. His idea this time was for a series on movies that started as one film and were dubbed into something else.

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International Secret Police: Key of Keys is the fourth of five James Bond parody movies in Japan known as Kokusai Hhimitsu Keisatsu. Yet once Woody Allen got hold of it — it’s his directorial debut — the story turned into a battle for the world’s best egg salad recipe.

Originally intended to be just an hour-long made for TV movie, Henry G. Saperstein and American International Pictures took more footage from International Secret Police: A Barrel of Gunpowder, an actor imitating Allen’s voice and music numbers from The Lovin’ Spoonful to pad the running time of the film and get it into theaters. Allen had no control over that, a mistake that he wouldn’t make in any of his future projects.

The voices in the film include Allen’s writing partner Mickey Rose (he’d go on to write and direct Student Bodies), Julie Bennett (Madame Piranha’s voice in King Kong Escapes), Frank Buxton (a story editor on Love, American Style), Len Maxwell (the voice of Punchy, the Hawaiian Punch mascot) and Allen’s wife at the time, Louise Lasser.

After some nonsensical action about the mob and the secret agents vying for the egg salad recipe — intercut with Allen himself speaking about his work on the film — the credits include China Lee, Playboy Playmate of the Month for August 1964 (and the then-wife of Allen’s comic idol Mort Sahl) stripping while Allen explains that he promised her a role in the film. She’d go on to appear in an episode of The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. and as one of the robot girls in Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, while we’re on the subject of spy films.

Speaking of spy women, two of the secret agents in this movie — Akiko Wakabayashi and Mie Hama — would also show up in You Only Live Twice.

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.