Editor’s note: Cinematic Void will be playing this movie on January 14 at 7:00 PM at Regal Mira Mesa in San Diego. You can get tickets here. There’s also an event the next day at the Whistle Stop Bar on Thursday, January 15th at 9 PM. It’s a night of drinks, socializing with the film community, and…of course, all things GIALLO. This edition of THE DIVE IN, presented by Popcorn Reef and Morricone Youth, will take you on a journey through shocking Italian cinema. More info here. For more information, visit Cinematic Void.

Deep Red is one of the few Argento movies that I’ve seen in a theater and the drive-in. It’s not the best film for the fast-moving grindhouse or drive-in, but it is a great film. After all, it started with a 500-page script that even Dario Argento’s family felt was too cryptic and continues with not just one, but two references to American painter Edward Hopper. This isn’t just a movie about murder. This is a movie that transforms murder into art.

We begin at Christmas, as two shadowy figures battle until one of them stabs the other. Screams ring out as a knife drops at the feet of a child.

Fast forward to Rome, as a medium named Helga Ulmann is conducting a lecture about her psychic powers. Within moments, she senses that one of the people in the theater is a killer. Later that night, that killer kicks in her front door and murders her with a meat cleaver (which is probably why this movie got the boring American title of The Hatchet Murders).

British musician Marcus Daly (David Hemmings, Barbarella, Blowup, Harlequin), who fits the giallo mold of the stranger in a strange land thrust into the middle of a series of murders that he must solve, is returning home from drinking with his gay best friend Carlo (Gabriele Lavia, Beyond the Door, Inferno) when he sees the murder that we’ve just witnessed from the street. He runs to save Helga, but she’s thrust through the window and her neck is pierced by the broken glass of her window in a kill that has become Argento’s trademark.

As he tells the police what has happened, he notices that a painting on Helga’s wall is gone. That’s when Gianna Brezzzi (Argento’s soon-to-be wife, Dario Nicolodi, who met him during the filming of this movie) takes his photo, which ends up on the cover of the newspaper the very next day.

Unlike most giallo women, Gianna is presented as more competent and even stronger than our hero — she sits high above him in her Fiat 500 and continually bests Marcus every time they arm wrestle. Nicolodi is so perfect in this film that she both breaks and warms your heart at every turn.

Marcus isn’t your typical hero, though. When the killer attacks him, he doesn’t stop them by daring or skill. He locks himself in his study to escape them. He does remember the song the killer played — we also have heard it when Helga is murdered — that psychiatrist (and Helga’s boyfriend) Professor Giordani believes is related to some trauma that motivates the killer.

Feeling guilty that she’s caused the killer to come after Marcus, Gianna relates an urban legend of a haunted house where the sounds of a singing child and screams of murder can be heard. The truth lies in House of the Screaming Child, a book written by Amanda Righetti, which tells the truth of the long-forgotten murder. Marcus and Gianna would learn even more, but the killer beats them to her house and drowns her in a bathtub of scalding hot water (directly influencing the murder of Karen Bailey in Halloween 2). As she dies, the writer leaves a message behind on the wall, which our heroes find. They’ve already assumed the investigation — again, in the giallo tradition — and think the police will assume that Marcus is the murderer, so they don’t report the crime.

Marcus follows the trail of the killer from a picture in the book to the real house, which has been abandoned since 1963. As he searches the home, he uncovers a child’s drawing of a murdered man and a Christmas tree, echoing the flashback that starts the film. Yet when he leaves the room, we see more plaster fall away, revealing a third figure.

Marcus tells his friend Carlos all that he’s learned, but his friend reacts in anger, telling him to stop questioning things and to just leave town with his new girlfriend. At this point, you can start to question Marcus’ ability as a hero — he misses vital clues, he hides instead of fighting and he can’t even tell that someone is in love with him.

Professor Giordani steams up the Righetti murder scene and sees part of the message that she left on the wall. That night, a mechanical doll is set loose in his office as the killer breaks in, smashing his teeth on the mantle and stabbing him in the neck.

Meanwhile, Marcus and Gianna realize that the house has a secret room, with Marcus using a pickaxe to knock down the walls, only to discover a skeleton and Christmas tree. An unseen person knocks our hero out and sets the house on fire, but Gianna is able to save him. As they wait for the police, Marcus sees that the caretaker’s daughter has drawn the little boy with the bloody knife. The little girl explains that she had seen this before at her school.

Marcus finds the painting at the young girl’s school and learns that Carlo painted it. Within moments, his friend turns up, stabs Gianna and holds him at gunpoint. The police arrive and Carlo flees, only to be dragged down the street and his head messily run over by a car.

With Gianna in the hospital and his best friend obviously the murder, Marcus then has the Argento-esque moment of remembering critical evidence: there’s no way Carlo could have killed the psychic, as they were together when they heard her screams. The portrait that he thought was missing from the apartment was a mirror and the image was the killer — who now appears in front of him.

The real killer is Martha (Clara Calamai, who came out of retirement for this role, an actress famous for her telefoni bianchi comedy roles), who killed Carlo’s father in the flashback we’ve seen numerous times after he tried to commit her. She chases Marcus with a meat cleaver, striking him in the shoulder, but he kicks her and her long necklace becomes caught in an elevator which beheads her. The film ends with the reflection of Marcus in the pool of the killer’s blood.

While this film feels long, it has moments of great shock and surprise, such as the two graphic murders that end the film and the clockwork doll. The original cut was even longer, as most US versions remove 22 minutes of footage, including the most graphic violence, any attempts at humor, any romantic scenes between David Hemmings and Daria Nicolodi, and some of the screaming child investigation.

This is also the first film where Argento would work with Goblin. After having scored Argento’s The Five Days — a rare comedy —  Giorgio Gaslini was to provide music for the film. Argento didn’t like what he did and attempted to convince Pink Floyd to be part of the soundtrack. After failing to get them to be part of Deep Red, Goblin leader Claudio Simonetti impressed the director by producing two songs in one night. They’d go on to not only write the music for this film, but also for plenty of future Argento projects.

A trivia note: Argento’s horror film museum and gift shop, Profondo Rosso, is named after the Italian title to this movie.

Deep Red is the bridge between Argento’s animal-themed giallo and supernatural based films. While its pace may seem glacial to modern audiences, it still packs plenty of moments of mayhem that approaches high art.

Based on Wu Cheng’en’s novel Journey to the West — specifically the story of Red Boy — The Fantastic Magic Baby. Chang Cheh pretty much makes Peking opera — there’s even an entire filmed version of one after the main movie — in which Red Boy (Ting Wa-Chung) comes to collect a tribute from the humans who worship the gods Princess Iron Fan and Ox Demon King, who are his parents. He ends up kidnapping Tripitaka (Teng Jue-Jen), a monk whose flesh is said to add thousands of years to your life when consumed, which means that Monkey King (Lau Chung-Chun) and Pigsy (Chen I-Ho) need to fix things.

I tell you that synopsis and it doesn’t matter, because this is basically an hour of long fights, musical sequences, little speaking, wild costumes — stone men and tree people! — and gorgeous visuals filmed against solid colored backgrounds. There’s also so much fog that Lucio Fulci would say, “This is almost enough fog.”

This just washed over me, delighting my senses with its gorgeous visuals and athletic fights. It moves so quickly that you can just sit back and take it all in and feel good in the knowledge that you’re seeing something unlike any other film out there. I love that so many Shaw Brothers movies are shot on sets and this is the extreme version of that, as there’s not even an actual physical location as much as these are shot within a candy colored, misty wonderland.

With fights put together by Peking opera star Li Tong-Chun and Lau Kar-Leung, this is all the action you want in addition to all that arty feel. You can tell people you’re watching high culture.

This Eureka release has two commentary tracks, one by action cinema experts Mike Leeder and Arne Venema and the other by Frank Djeng. You can get it from MVD.

In 1974, Shaw Brothers collaborated with Hammer on The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires. That ignited a desire not only to make martial arts films, but also supernatural ones. And man, as the studio goes on, these movies grow more deranged in the very best of ways.

Ho Meng-Hua (The Mighty Peking Man, Oily Maniac) directed this, and it only hints at how far Hong Kong horror would go. Lang Chia Chieh (Lo Lieh) wants to be with Mrs. Zhou (Tanny Tien Ni), but she’s in love with Xu Nuo (Ti Lung), who only wants to be with the love of his life, Wang Chu Ying (Lili Li Li-li). To win her, Lang Chia Chieh goes to the magician Shan Chen Mi (Ku Feng) and has him cast a spell on Mrs. Zhou. It works, if only for a night, and she soon learns that she, too, can turn to the spirit world to win over the lover she wants.

These magic spells are incredibly organic and gross. Like, you need to cut off someone’s finger and leave it under your intended person’s bed until it turns into a pile of maggots. Or to kill someone, you put worms directly under their skin.

There’s a lot of soap opera in this, but every time you think it’s getting slow, someone gets half-naked or makes a possessed rice ball with blood and breast milk, so you can never say it’s bad. It’s just the first course for how completely out there these movies will get.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. It has commentary by critic James Mudge. You can get this set from MVD.

Inspired by the huge success of the Japanese superhero versus monster fare such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider in Hong Kong, the Shaw Brothers produced the first Chinese superhero in 1975, which they called Infra-Man. However, they pushed the envelope created by the Japanese even further, inventing a world where a school bus can crash, Hong Kong can be destroyed, an earthquake can happen and monsters appear all within the first minute of the film.

Let me see if I can summarize the blast of pure odd that I just watched at 5 AM: Princess Dragon Mom (known in the original version of this film as Demon Princess Elzebub) is a ten million-year-old mother of monsters who wants to destroy the Earth. She carries around a whip and has a dragon head on her hand, but can also turn into a monster herself. She also has an entire legion of beasts ready to do whatever she asks, like her assistant She-Demon (Witch-Eye in the original), who is an Asian girl with a hand that has an eyeball in the middle of it. Also: both of these ladies wear metallic bikinis with skulls all over them and have several costume changes. They also have an army of cannon fodder dressed in skeletal costumes, which was obviously the influence for the Skeleton Crew in the new episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

They’re battling with Science Headquarters, led by Professor Liu Ying-de. He’s used the BDX Project to transform Lei Ma (Danny Lee, The Killer) into the bionic kung-fu kicking motorcycle riding Infra-Man, who has whatever powers he needs for any situation. He’s also really good at getting tall and stepping on monsters until their green blood pours out. Bruce Lee tribute actor Bruce Le also appears as Lu Xiao-long, another member of the team.

You get all manner of monsters in this one — the Emperor of Doom, the Giant Beetle Monster, an Octopus Mutant, the Driller Beast, a Laser Horn Monster and the Iron Fist Robots. All of them are given to dramatic pronouncements, overacting and blowing up real good.

Believe it or not, Roger Ebert said, “When they stop making movies like Infra-Man, a little light will go out of the world.” Twenty-two years later, he went even further: “I find to my astonishment that I gave Infra-Man only two and a half stars when I reviewed it. That was 22 years ago, but a fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn’t think he’d remember. I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that film. So, in answer to those correspondents who ask if I have ever changed a rating on a movie: Yes, Infra-Man moves up to three stars.”

He’s right — this movie is completely unhinged, with dragon witch women who threaten to throw little girls down volcanos, blotting out the sun and rocket fists. They should have made five thousand sequels to this.

The Arrow Video release of this film, part of the Shaw Scope Volume 4 set, has a high definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation, newly restored in 2K from the original negatives by Arrow Films. There’s an option to view the film in its US theatrical version, Infra-man, with lossless “Stereo-Infra-Sound” surround audio. You also get commentary by martial arts cinema experts Frank Djeng and Erik Ko, an interview with Bruce Le, a video essay on Shaws’ tokusatsu films written and narrated by Steven Sloss, theatrical trailers, TV ads and radio commercials. You can get this set from MVD.

Homosexual fashion designer Bruce Wilson (Stephen Strucker, Johnny the air traffic controller from Airplane!), sexed up Dick Peters (Bob Minor) and Carl C. Clooney (Michael Pataki) escape the insane asylum and work their way into a girls’ school. Still, instead of this being a revengeomatic, it’s a comedy.

The Delinquent School Girls cut of this film missed the first half hour and all of George “Buck” Flower’s scenes that were in the Carnal Madness version. It was also released in the UK as Scrubbers 2 to cash in on the girl school movie Scrubbers and as Sizzlers as part of a double feature with Intimate Games.

Directed by Greg Corarito (who directed The Sadistic Hypnotist and Hard On the Trail, the adult film that sent Lash LaRue on a journey of redemption), who wrote the movie with John Lamb (Mondo Keyhole, Zodiac Killer), Maurie Smith (who wrote Recruits and Julie Darling), it starts with the men visiting the farm of Earl (George “Buck” Flower) and his wife Ellie (Julie Gant), who ends up in bed with Dick, a former baseball play r. Then, it’s off to the school where the girls end up kicking their asses more often than not, and Pataki gets to show his skill at impressions.

As for the girls, there’s Colleen Brennan (AKA Sharon Kelly, Olga Vault; she’s also in Supervixens and Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS), magazine starlet Roberta Pedon and several attractive actresses who made this their only movie.  Brennan said of this movie, “I always wondered how anybody managed to pull a movie out of that reeking pile of short ends.”

The VCI release of this film has a new commentary track by Rob Kelly, noted film historian, podcaster and artist. There’s also an archival commentary track by actor and stuntman, Bob Minor, as well as a featurette — Cuckoo for Pyschotronica — and a photo and poster gallery. You can get this from MVD.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Exploitation-film historian A.C. Nicholas, who has a sketchy background and hails from parts unknown in Western Pennsylvania, was once a drive-in theater projectionist and disk jockey. In addition to being a writer, editor, podcaster, voice-over artist, and sometime actor and stand-up comedian, he’s a regular guest co-host on the streaming Drive-In Asylum Double Feature and panelist on the Deep Images podcast and has made multiple appearances on Making Tarantino: The Podcast. He also contributes to the Drive-In Asylum fanzine, the B & S About Movies Podcast, and the Horror and Sons website. He currently programs a monthly film series, A.C. Nicholas’s Hidden Gems, at the Babylon Kino in Columbia, South Carolina.

“You got peanut butter on my chocolate! You got chocolate in my peanut butter!” Those of us of a certain age remember those famous lines from the TV commercials for Reese’s candy back in the 1970s. Chocolate and peanut butter, a mash-up made in heaven. There’ve been many movie mash-ups over the years, everything from horror comedies like Shaun of the Dead, westerns with horror elements, like Bone Tomahawk, and romance noirs, like the seriously underrated Thief of Hearts. But the craziest mash-up I’ve ever seen is the Canadian film The Heatwave Lasted Four Days.

Let’s get the plot out of the way before discussing this bizarre melding of two disparate genres. Cliff Reynolds, played by Canadian legend Gordon Pinsent (The Rowdyman, The Shipping News, and Away from Her), is a news cameraman working for CFCF-TV in Montreal. He’s a sleazy lothario given to wearing garish shirts with too many buttons unbuttoned and medallions. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on his wardrobe choices. We all looked like that back in the 70s. Anyway, one day he’s at the beach getting some footage for a story about the heatwave. But more importantly, he uses the assignment to chat up some cute girls in bikinis. Jerry Cuozzo, a local drug dealer with ties to organized crime, played by yet another Canadian legend, Lawrence Dane (Rituals, Scanners, and Happy Birthday to Me), has just escaped from prison. (He apparently climbed over the wall while awaiting trial. Don’t ask.) He’s spending some time at the beach with his main gal, Barbara, the delectable Alexandra Stewart (The Bride Wore Black, The Uncanny, Emanuelle 3, Phobia, and Bolero). And while we’re playing spot-the-Canuck, beloved Al Waxman (King of Kensington, Cagney and Lacey, Death Weekend, The Class of 1984, and Spasms) shows up as Cliff’s boss. Of course he does.

Here we have the fugitive lounging at the beach while his face is plastered all over TV. Why? Don’t ask. Jerry realizes that Cliff has filmed him in the background, so he and Barbara tell Cliff that they’re having an affair and implore him not to use the footage. Cliff says that he won’t. He goes home to his wife and daughter. There we learn, in short order, that it’s his little girl’s birthday, his wife is fed up with his carousing, and they’re in financial trouble. (The film’s short running time means we get some speedy exposition at the expense of giving the wife a name.) As you can probably guess, Cliff figures out that the guy on the beach was Jerry. Now you can ask: Will he try to use this information to solve his money problems and get in over his head? Will the mob try to rub out Jerry? Will there be a deal to move heroin across the border to the Lower 48, eh? Will there be a few twists? And will Cliff try to bed one of the beach babes? Of course you know the answers to those questions.

OK, that’s the basis of a tidy little film with some vintage footage of Montreal and a nice economy of direction from Douglas Jackson, a stalwart of Canadian TV and a 1970 Oscar nominee for Best Live-Action Short. But you’re thinking that my plot synopsis gives no hint of the mash-up. Well, wait no longer. Here’s the solution to the mystery: The Heatwave Lasted Four Days is a neo-noir and educational film. As Scooby-Doo would say, “Huh???”

This film was a weird experiment of the National Film Board of Canada to teach English as a second language to Francophones in Quebec and to do so in an entertaining, commercial way. There were several films in this “Filmglish” series. So if you think about it, it’s a mash-up within a mash-up. Apparently, no one in the film was to speak with a French accent. Indeed, the only French spoken is in a short scene in a Montreal restaurant. The end credits even list a script language adviser. Incroyable! 

The film had a distribution history that was equally weird. In addition to being shown in Canadian classrooms, it was reportedly the first Canadian TV film purchased by a U.S. network, where it was shown twice on ABC’s Wide World of Entertainment. That was the network’s short-lived late-night offering designed to compete with NBC’s The Tonight Show and The CBS Late Movie. Afterward, the film disappeared for decades. But surprisingly, it popped up this past summer in a special edition Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome in conjunction with Canadian International Pictures, a company dedicated to preserving everything from “arthouse to Canuxploitation.” And what an edition it is, with three versions of the film: the 66-minute broadcast version, an extended 72-minute cut, and the classroom Filmglish version in four parts with added recaps and interstitials that run a total of 80 minutes. You also get audio commentary from the great TV-movie historian Amanda Reyes, along with a short comparing the three versions, two shorts and another TV film from director Douglas Jackson, a press gallery, and a poster. That’s a luxurious presentation for a film that until yesterday, I didn’t know existed. Tres incroyable!

If you want to be the geekiest film geek in your circle of film-geek friends, you could dress like they did in Montreal circa 1975, or you could just check out The Heatwave Lasted Four Days. While not a masterpiece, it’s an amazing curio. Here’s hoping for the release of more Canuck telefilms from our friends at Vinegar Syndrome.