Mill Creek box sets? Yeah, they’re kind of our jam. Just look at the work we’ve put into their Chilling Classics, Pure Terror and Explosive Cinema sets. I grabbed this set used for $2.50, but your mileage may vary. It goes anywhere from $10-150 on Amazon and $10-25 on eBay. It’s worth it — there are plenty of movies that fit the theme quite well.

Up first is Richard Kanter’s (Thar She Blows!, Sensual Encounters of Every Kind, Fantasy In Blue) 1971 grimy biker film Wild Riders. It’s all about Pete and Stick (Arell Blanton, whose IMDB list is full of cop roles and, yep, a very young Alex Rocco), two scumbags who get thrown out of their gang. So they do what any of us wouldn’t do — they take over a house and assault the two girls who are there.

One of them, Rona, is played by Elizabeth Knowles, who may be better known as Lisa Grant. That’s the name she used for Executive Wives and Behind the Green Door, one of the movies that introduced porno chic. The other girl, Laure, is played by Sherry Bain, who was in The Hard Ride and Ride the Hot Wind.

It’s another movie to cross off my Letterboxd Crown International list. If you’ve learned anything from this site, it’s that I am nothing if not a completist. If you end up thinking, “Is that Peter Fonda?” Well, no. But Arell Blanton is happy that you noticed him trying.

This movie holds the distinction of being some of Rick Baker’s first work. Made in Mexico, it was directed by Harry Essex, who wrote It Came from Space and Creature from the Black Lagoon. 

Dr. Rick Torres (Kerwin Mathews, The 7th Voyage of Sinbad) and Susan Lowry (Pier Angeli in her final film, as she died during production of the film) has found not just too much radiation in the waters of a small Mexican town, but also a mutant octopus that can crawl on land.

The mainstream science community scoffs at this notion, so Torres must work with circus owner Johnny Caurso (Jerome Guardino, who in addition to acting, as also the second-unit director from Grave of the Vampire and Dream No Evil), who wants to take the octopus on the road.

There’s some ridiculousness here with David Essex (The Cremators) as Davido, a Mexican Indian who shares the legend of the half-serpent, half-man that lives in these waters. He’s able to escape just about any predicament due to his magical native powers.

The man in the Octaman suit was Read Morgan, who was The Car, Blood Beach, Dudes, Hollywood Hot Tubs and more. The suit was so fragile and the vision so limited, that led to the shambling, near drunken way that the creature moves.

Even if you haven’t seen this movie, you’ve seen it. In Fright Night, Peter Vincent shows the final scenes — where beauty does indeed kill the beast — as being from a movie called Mars Needs Flesh.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Also known as Isle of the Snake People, the original title of this movie translates as  Living Death. It was directed by Juan Ibanez, who also directed star Boris Karloff in The Incredible Invasion, House of Evil and Fear Chamber.

Karloff’s box office value led to these movies being financed by Columbia Pictures, which would then distribute them. Karloff received $100,000 per film, which is about $641,000 in today’s money. He rejected the scripts for all four movies, but agreed to make them when Jack Hill — yes, the maker of Spider Baby — rewrote the stories.

Filming was to take place in Mexico City, but Karloff’s emphysema (as well as the fact that he’d already lost a lung to cancer and had pneumonia in the other) would not allow him to work in the city’s altitude. He shot his scenes — with Hill directing — at the Dored Studios in Los Angeles, with additional scenes shot in Mexico with a Karloff stand-in named Jerry Petty.

Captain Labesch has arrived at a far-flung island to stop the voodoo rites being carried out by Damballah (Karloff). He’s warned by local rich white man Carl van Molder (also Karloff) to leave well enough alone. There’s a temperance subplot too, but who cares when Kalea the snake dancer is turning women into zombies that eat policemen?

She is played by Yolanda Montes, who used the stage name Tongolele and was known as The Queen of Tahitian Dances. A vedette in the Mexican cabaret, Tongolele is a potent mix of Swedish and Spanish who was born in Spokane, Washington and continues to be a star in Mexico to this day. She even released an album at one point. I have to say, she looks like she stepped straight out of 2020, with her shaved head and fierce makeup. She’s seriously volcanic, taking over the film from the moment she appears,

Human sacrifice. Dance numbers. Near-psychedelic images. Zombies. Well, as to that latter part of this movie, Night of the Living Dead came out in the years between when this movie was made and when it was released. By that point, this seemed dated. No matter. Watching it today, I was beyond entertained by it.

You can watch this on YouTube.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I met Mitchell L. Hillman on the Gialloholics Facebook group and loved reading his review of movies. I’m so excited that he’s joining us for Giallo Week!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mitchell Hillman is a freelance writer who has spent most of his time in print writing about music, movies, art, and pop culture. He is also a professional artist, occasional pop-up chef, and suffers an addiction to curiosity and discovery. Over the last year he has watched over 300 Giallo and Giallo related movies, finding that they influence not only how he thinks about film, but also art.

The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971)
‘Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate’
Directed by Duccio Tessari

Long before I became a raving fan of Giallo, I was awestruck by Italian auteurs like Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini, and long before I found that kind of art-house bliss, I was enamored with “Spaghetti Westerns” since I was a child. While I’m fairly late to the game in appreciating the Giallo genre, I have always held Italian films in the highest esteem, but for me it all began with those Westerns where everyone had great outfits and the violence was a bit outrageous by typical American standards.

Duccio Tessari wrote and directed two of my favorite Spaghetti Westerns, two back to back explosions of brilliance starring Giuliano Gemma, A Pistol For Ringo (1965) and the comparable if not better sequel The Return of Ringo (1965). When I started watching Gialli obsessively, I was thrilled to discover he had directed three of these of peculiar murder mysteries. Arguably, his second The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971) is not only the best of the bunch, but it may be the finest movie of his entire career.  I first watched it shortly after going down the Gialli rabbit hole, after a quick education in Argento, Martino, Fulci, Bava, Lenzi, Ercoli and a few more. This movie stood up to those high standards and in some cases surpassed them, because The Bloodstained Butterfly isn’t just a great Giallo, it’s a great film in its own right beyond the context of the genre.

Most Gialli come in three discernible acts, but Tessari more or less presents The Bloodstained Butterfly in four. The first act starts by introducing each character after the credits roll with title cards as they go about their lives. This is notable and important as we see Marta, an alcoholic party girl who pours the first glass of J&B in the first three minutes of the movie; two schoolgirls Françoise and Sarah, Sarah’s mother Maria, her father Alessandro a TV sportscaster, their lawyer Giulio, a young pianist named Giorgio, and his mother and father. It’s an odd start, but as the movie unfolds you realize this movie is less about the violent acts that take place and more how these individuals’ lives are entwined.

The first act builds through the off-camera murder of Françoise in the park, presumably by a man in a beige overcoat with a houndstooth fedora, seen by several witnesses fleeing the scene, who we watch escape the clutches of the police in the pouring rain. Tessari immediately lets you know that he’s going to start messing with your head when we see Inspector Berardi at the murder scene wearing an identical outfit. The police procedural that follows shows off the fairly advanced forensic science of the early 1970s as they build evidence that put’s Sarah’s father on trial for the murder of her friend Françoise.  It’s a tension-filled start that doesn’t let up until Maria admits to the police that she had to send Alessandro’s beige overcoat to the dry cleaners since it was covered in mud.

Act Two is a wild courtroom drama that is filled with flashbacks and re-enactments of the crime. The evidence seems almost too perfect against Alessandro and everyone seems suspicious at this point, if you’ve watched enough Gialli or mystery films in general, Tessari gives you serious “wrong man” vibe as the defendant is tried and sentenced to life. In the meantime, Giorgio has taken to dating Sarah, with more than a few hints that he was previously dating Françoise. He also seems to become more and more unhinged as the film continues.

The third act, almost seems like a bridge in a song, but it is an act unto itself in which Tessari makes you suspicious of nearly everyone, all the while assuring you that Alessandro is innocent. Another murder takes place and you suspect the lawyer Giulio, a third murder takes place and Giorgio is in the right place to be suspected.  For a Giallo there is very little gore, and only aftermath, but it doesn’t make it less chilling. The horror is psychological as you question who is responsible for the murders since Alessandro is in prison.  He is finally released when Marta, revealed to be his mistress, confirms his alibi.

The finale is one of my favorites and I’m not about to spoil it for anyone, it’s beautiful, a bit heart wrenching, and we understand the title in the last few moments. By the time the last act arrives you have no idea who the murderer is and you have reasons to be suspicious of everyone. Tessari’s direction is wonderful, the score by Gianni Ferrio is brilliant, and while it’s not the bloodiest or most colorful Giallo around, it’s one of the more intellectually and psychologically satisfying entries in the genre. Tessari’s “doorway transitions” are amazing and he even adds some humor with Inspector Berardi’s routine with being continually dissatisfied with every cup of coffee handed to him. I’d say it’s criminally underrated but, I’ve heard nothing but applause from fellow Giallo aficionados on this one. Even outside of the genre, the way Tessari plays with memory, space, time and perception makes for a great cinematic experience.

Five years after Africa Blood and Guts, Gualtiero Jacopetti and Franco Prosperi returned with this movie, which is pretty much one of the roughest films I’ve ever made it through.

This was shot primarily in Haiti, where the directors were the guests of Haitian dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, who gave them diplomatic cars, clearance to film anywhere on the island and as many extras as they required to be used as slaves being treated exactly as slaves were. They were also invited to a nightly dinner with Duvalier himself.

If your mind isn’t already blown, stick around.

Goodbye Uncle Tom is based on true events in which the filmmakers explore America in slavery times, using published documents and materials from the public record to make what they consider a documentary, even claiming to go back in time to achieve this level of realism.

This movie was made in opposition to the claims that Africa Blood and Guts was racist. It didn’t work, as Roger Ebert would say, “They have finally done it: Made the most disgusting, contemptuous insult to decency ever to masquerade as a documentary.” He also stated that “This movie itself humiliates its actors in the way the slaves were humiliated 200 years ago.”

The movie was originally released in Italy in a 119-minute version and was immediately withdrawn. I’ve read that the directors were sued for plagiarism by writer Joseph Chamberlain Furnas. It was then re-released with 17 more minutes of footage.

The directors’ cut shows a comparison between the horrors of slavery and the rise of the Black Power Movement, ending with an unidentified black man’s fantasy of living out William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. In that book, Turned is divinely inspired and given a mission from God to lead a slave uprising and destroy the white race.

This ending upset American distributors so much that they forced Jacopetti and Prosperi to cut more than thirteen minutes of racial politics that would upset their audiences. Pauline Kael still said that the movie was “the most specific and rabid incitement to race war,” a view shared with former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who said that Goodbye Uncle Tom was a Jewish conspiracy to incite blacks on white violence.

This movie is not for everyone. But I feel that it needs to be seen. I rarely get political on this site, but in truth, I feel that we as a country have not done enough to understand the roots of the black experience. While an Italian exploitation film isn’t the best way to learn more, it’s a start.

It’s no accident that Cannibal Holocaust would eventually use the music of Riz Ortolani to juxtapose the horrific images on screen with the beauty of his compositions. The composer had been working with the duo since Mondo Cane, where his song “More” nearly won an Oscar.

But make no mistake that this movie, while intending to be educational and anti-racist, still employs the tools of the mondo and exploitation. How else do you describe the conceit that these filmmakers have gone back in time, taking a helicopter with them that they use to fly away from the terrors of the plantation at the end?

In 2010, Dr. David Pilgrim, the curator of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, said that when he showed this film to a class, it led to some major traumas. “On the day that we watched Goodbye Uncle Tom three students had unexcused absences, several cried while watching, one almost vomited; most sat, sad and disgusted. I taught for another fifteen years but I never showed that movie again.”

He went on to say that the film “is a more truthful portrayal of the brutality and obscenity of slave life than was Roots; however, I have some major problems with the film. I find it ironic that a movie that explored the exploitation and degradation of Black people was filmed in a way that exploited and degraded Black people. In some ways Goodbye Uncle Tom was just a XXX movie set against the backdrop of slavery; the “peculiar institution” served as an excuse to show sexual and violent gore. Jacopetti and Prosperi told a great many painful truths about slavery but they debased hundreds of Blacks to make the film.”

“I said all of that to say this: Jacopetti and Prosperi were not the messengers that I would have selected, and their implied assumptions about Blacks are troubling, but they made a movie that accurately portrayed the horrors of slavery. Of course, it is the case that a realistic depiction of the savagery of slavery would be difficult to watch no matter who made it. This is why when you finish watching Roots you may feel that a family has overcome great oppression and a nation has become more democratic; whereas when you finish watching Goodbye Uncle Tom you just feel sick to your stomach.”

That says a lot about this movie in a better way than I can, but I’m still going to try to sum it up: this is a well-made movie that may have been made with the best of intentions, but was made by two people who only had the experience to make exactly what they made. It is a movie made about slavery that used slave labor. It is a movie that offended both liberals and conservatives, those that believed in tolerance and those that were racist, those that were black and people who were white. This is a message movie that had its message taken away by American producers, leaving two hours of shock with none of the moral it so desperately needed.

If this movie upsets you, perhaps you needed to be upset. You should be less upset about a movie made nearly fifty years ago and more upset about our nation’s history of racism and intolerance. And you should definitely be upset about the lack of civil rights in our country today. I’m writing this after a day of nationwide protest, with police cars ablaze and crowds of protesters and the press teargassed.

If you choose, you can watch this on Tubi.

When you say, “Sam, would you like to watch a movie about 1970’s witchcraft from the director of I Am a Groupie, The Girl from Starship Venus and Blood Tracks?” the answer is always going to be yes.

This 47-minute movie is packed with narration from the women about to enter witchcraft and appearances by Alex Sanders, the English occultist responsible for founding the tradition of Alexandrian Wicca during the 1960s.

Sanders was known as the “King of the Witches,” with his skyclad female followers — naked to the unoccult leaning — getting plenty of attention in the era of this film.

Watch as Penny — the girl who thinks she might make a good witch — joins Sanders’ coven! Come now! Into my coven! To become Lucifer’s child! And you also get to see a Wiccan wedding, which is notable for the amount of full frontal male nudity that it has. Flaccid dong, will you take this magickal childe?

This movie is absolutely awesome. I mean, it’s no Witchcraft ’70 — and what is, really? — but it’s one of the more entertaining things I’ve watched as of late.