One of the nice things about an Italian ripoff film is that it allows us to revisit the worlds of our favorite movies. You don’t need any exposition or set up — you already know all about how New York City got even worse from Escape from New York. Just sit back and enjoy, because Enzo G. Castellari (the director of the original The Inglorious Bastards) is at the wheel.

“In the year 1990 the Bronx is officially declared No Man’s Land. The authorities give up all attempts to restore law and order. From then on the area is ruled by the Riders.”

The Riders are having some problems. There might be a traitor in their midst. And Trash (Mark Gregory, Adam and Eve vs. the Cannibals and the sequel to this film, Escape from the Bronx), their leader, can’t get his mind right “now that’s he’s had a taste of Manhattan pussy.” Oh yeah — there’s also a turf war that could break out at any time.

That aforementioned Manhattan pussy is Ann, the heiress to the Manhattan Corporation, an arms company that has no morals. She’s left her duties behind, but the company has hired Hammer (Vic Morrow, The Twilight Zone: The Movie, Message from Space), a mercenary who was born in the Bronx, to bring her back. His plan? Turn the gang derision up to 11.

Producer Fabrizio De Angelis claimed that he got the idea for this movie when he missed a subway stop and ended up in the Bronx, imagining a future where gangs would battle for their homes. In truth, he probably saw how successful The Warriors was. Sorry, that sounds cynical, but once you see this film’s gangs, like the rollerskating Zombies, you may feel the same way.

With interiors filmed in the actual Bronx and interiors filmed in the totally fake Bronx (regulations required that 50% of a film had to be shot in Italy), the film actually looks pretty great.

Plus, it has one hell of a cast, with Fred “The Hammer” Williamson making Ogre the best character in the movie. Essentially playing the same role as Isaac Hayes in Escape, his outfits, harem of women and fighting style make him stand out. His girlfriend, Witch, is played by 1976 Summer Olympian Elisabetta Dessy and she’s awesome, as she fights with not only a whip but claws, too! And she does it all wearing a cape!

Hot Dog is an informant that Hammer uses against the gang, played by Christopher Connelly of TV’s Peyton Place and Manhattan Baby. And oh shit, George Eastman, Nikos Karamanlis himself, plays Golem, who dresses like a Mortal Kombat character. How can this shit get any better? It can’t. I was so excited during this film — I watched it around 4 AM, when all good movies should be consumed — that I started yelling for the gang to wise up and kill Ice, the traitor who dresses like a Nazi.

There’s also a bonkers scene where the Riders and Tigers meet in front of the World Trade Center and drummers play while they talk. None of the drum playing was scripted! Even better, real Hells Angels — including Chuck Zito — made up most of the bikers in the film (they made fun of the stiff assed way that Mark Gregory walked during filming)! And I haven’t even gotten to the Iron Men, a gang that tap dances!

There’s also some of the best dialogue to ever be uttered in a movie. Seriously, 1990: The Bronx Warriors has a way with expletives that only the finest of swearers can achieve. Some examples include:

“You fuck! Look it could be a pile of shit out of somebody’s asshole!”

“Your mother never gave birth to you, did she. Just popped you into the sewer and split, letting you blossom into the asshole you are today.”

“Keep talking fag face and I’ll rip your fucking head off!”

Words to live by!

After the Riders and the Tigers come together, the man comes down on them hard, sending troops on horseback, armed with flamethrowers. Just like Shakespeare, everyone dies. Even Ann gets killed, but not before she says, “”Remember we in the Bronx live with death!” But don’t worry. Trash is ready, grabbing a grappling hook gun and killing off Hammer (who in a weird meta bit, kills Fred “The Hammer” just moments before). Trash gingerly walks off into the sunset, as if he has batwings.

I don’t know if these words are enough to convince you how much I love this film. It’s a glorious mess, but it’s also like making a suicide soda — the non-PC name we gave pouring every soda on the fountain into one drink. It’s a delirious cavalcade of sugary nonsense, hamfisted pathos and mayhem, where you can’t focus on any one flavor, so you just enjoy them all, but the sugar high gets you past any aftertaste.

You can watch this on Shudder!

UPDATE: Blue Underground has just re-released this movie as part of a box set of post-apocalyptic movies, along with Warriors of the Wasteland and Escape from the Bronx!

When the general public thinks of a slasher film with no redeeming value whatsoever, chances are they’re thinking about this movie. It is at the same time the best and worst film you’ve ever watched. But more importantly, it is never ever boring.

Back in 1942, a young boy named Timmy was putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a naked woman. His mother, understandably, is upset and demands he get a garbage bag to throw the puzzle away. Instead, he came back with an axe to her head and then cut her up with a hacksaw. He hides in a closet and the police send him to live with his aunt, as they believe whoever killed his mother had escaped.

This all happens within the first minute of this movie. Yes, Pieces packs more gore and strangeness into sixty records than most movies do in ninety minutes.

Cut to (no pun intended) a girl studying outside, who gets her head chopped off by a chainsaw and stolen. Lt. Bracken (Christopher George, Day of the Animals, City of the Living Dead) and Sgt. Holden (Frank Braña, Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, If You Shoot…You Live, God Forgives…I Don’t!) start their investigation, meeting the dean (Edmund Purdom, Absurd, 2019: After the Fall of New York) and anatomy Professor Brown (Jack Taylor, Horror of the Zombies, Conan the Barbarian). Rounding out our suspects would be Willard (Paul Smith, Bluto from Altman’s Popeye, one of the first movies that I remember hating as a child), a groundskeeper who is using a chainsaw.

Then, in the library, Kendall gets a note from a girl, telling him to come see her at the pool. The killer reads the note first and chainsaws the girl to, well, pieces. Willard is arrested and the detectives find the chainsaw and the girl’s body…except for her torso (no, not 1973’s Torso).

Meanwhile, Dr. Hennings (Gérard Tichy, Hatchet for the Honeymoon) meets with Kendall to get a profile of the murderer. They also bring in an undercover cop named Mary Riggs (Lynda Day George, TV’s Mission: Impossible, Mortuary), who will be acting as a tennis instructor to try and catch the killer. How the killer is attracted to tennis is never explained. And according to director Juan Piquer Simón, none of the women in the movie knew how to play tennis, despite the fact that they are playing professionals in this movie. They had to hire a tennis coach for the production as a result. Why tennis figures so prominently in Pieces is one of the many mysteries of this film.

The killer then decimates a girl who just finished her dance routine — dance and aerobics are also vital points of this film — and saws her arms off. He also stabs a reporter who is nebbing about — all before the cops arrive on the scene.

One of Mary’s tennis students is then sawed in half while loud music blares on the school’s loudspeakers. The volume of this music drives people completely insane! Mary and Kendall discover the body, as well as the fact that Willard has been released. Before calling the cops, they decide to turn the music down. Bad idea — the killer steals the girl’s legs. Mary then has a nervous breakdown which is, for some, the most memorable part of Pieces.

Kendall wants to be a cop — and why not, the real cops just let college students follow them as they chase murderers — and together with Lt. Holden, they come up with the theory that the killer is on the school’s teaching staff.

Surprise! The dean has changed his name, which used to be Timmy. Mary has figured this out as well, but Timmy/the dean has drugged her and is sawing of her feet to see if they fit into his mother’s shoes. The cops and Kendall arrive to stop him, shooting him the head.

Everyone is joking around, about how Kendall should be a cop now, when a bookshelf is triggered and they discover the human jigsaw puzzle of body parts wearing Timmy’s mother’s dress. It falls on Kendall, who screams his head off and is traumatized.

Finally, as the cops and Kendall leave, the corpse comes back to life and squeezes Kendall’s nuts so hard that blood pours out of his jeans. Why is the body still alive? Why is it after arguably the hero of the movie’s twig and berries? Oh, the questions you will have when you watch Pieces!

Any film with the tagline, “It’s exactly what you think it is!” is going to go for the jugular. This one also goes for the femoral vein, renal artery and the dorsalis pedis artery.

Oh man! I nearly forgot — there’s a cameo by Bruce Lee imitator, Bruce Le, in Pieces that don’t fit into the movie at all! He just shows up and tries to do karate moves on Mary, thinking she is the killer. This is all because producer Dick Randall was simultaneously some kung-fu films in Rome! Here’s an example of just how racist this scene is:

Kendall: Oh, hey, it’s my Kung Fu professor. What’s the story, Chao?

Karate Professor: Oh, I am out jogging and next thing I know I am on ground! Something I eat, bad chop suey. So long!

This film is filled with completely bonkers dialogue. Here is one of my favorite moments:

Lt. Bracken: You’ll be playing so much tennis it’ll be coming out of your ears!

And this exchange:

Female Student 1: Have you ever been laid on a waterbed?

Female Student 2: The most beautiful thing in the world is smoking pot and fucking on a waterbed, at the same time.

Oh man! I can’t forget the scene where Sgt. Holden calls a friend on the force for help and then says, “I’ll send you a box of lollipops,” suggesting that Pieces and Kojak take place in the same universe!

There was another title for this film — The Night Has 1,000 Screams — but I prefer Pieces. It’s a grimy, scummy, goofy, strange film that will find it’s way into your heart so that it can cut it out and stab it several times, then saw it up and throw it in a garbage bag.

You can watch this with and without Joe Bob Briggs’ commentary on Shudder!

A lot of movies got made after Halloween that sought to get some of its success. This is one of them, but according to friend of the site Bill Van Ryn of Groovy Doom, it’s also a remake of 1971’s Fright.

Directed by Gary Graver, whose IMDB page is veritably packed with films like Sorceress, Sorceress II: The Temptress, Mortuary and Femalien II, this film concerns a babysitter, who is stuck watching a kid on Halloween while her boyfriend is in a play. Christopher, the babysittee, is a total asshole. I mean that — in a world of annoying horror movie children, he may be the most horrible ever. He keeps acting like he’s cut himself or killed himself and she keeps finding him, cries and then he yells “trick or treat” and runs away.

Meanwhile, the kid’s dad, Malcolm (Peter Jason from They Live, In the Mouth of Madness and Prince of Darkness) was put into a mental asylum by the mother (Carrie Snodgrass, who allowed the production to use her home) years ago. He’s broken out and is coming home to kill her. Except she’s out with her new husband, Richard (David Carradine!) and only checking in via phone calls.

Speaking of phone calls, Malcolm keeps calling home with threats.

Oh yeah. Steve Railsback is the boyfriend. Paul Bartel shows up as a bum and literally chews up the entire scene that he is in. There’s a movie within a movie that the babysitter’s friend is editing. And Orson Welles is credited as the magic consultant, due to Graver working so closely with him for decades.

There is not a single likable person in this film. I wanted the kid to die literally from the minute he appeared on screen. The killer isn’t particularly fearsome. And the tagline “…when Halloween night stopped being fun!” doesn’t promise much.

But I still find stuff to love in it, like the interstitial answering of the trick or treat door, hoping that something big is going to happen. And the movie within a movie’s speech about transcendental meditation made me laugh.

PS – Peter Jason played Father in Meat Loaf: Bat Out of Hell II – Picture Show and there are times within this film that I thought that he really was Meat Loaf!

It doesn’t matter to me whether or not The Amityville Horror is truth or fiction. The truth is that the original film isn’t all that exciting. But the sequel? Holy shit — the sequel is pretty much everything you want in a movie — if you love movies filled with horrifyingly sick moments of glee.

Damiano Damiani, whose 1960’s and 1970’s western and crime output were marked by a streak of social criticism, directed this film from a screenplay by Tommy Lee Wallace (who not only played Michael Myers in the original Halloween, but would go on to direct Halloween III: Season of the Witch and the original version of It).

The film is actually a prequel, telling the story of the Montellis, who are based upon the DeFeo family. Anthony (Burt Young from Rocky) is the father of this brood. He’s rude, ill-tempered and ready to abuse everyone at a moment’s notice. If you’re looking for any family values — in fact, any values at all — you’re watching the wrong film.

He’s married to Dolores (Rutanya Alda, Carol Ann from Mommie Dearest), his long-suffering and very Catholic wife. They have four kids — Sonny, Patricia (Diane Franklin, Monique from Better Off Dead, as well as TerrorVision and Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure), Mark and Jan. Even from the very beginning of the film, the family is on edge. Every single interaction between them is marked by weirdness before we even get into the occult portion of this film.

Things get worse — much worse — after a tunnel is found in the basement. This leads to doors knocking all night long and demonic messages showing up in the youngest kids’ room. Turning to the Church, Dolores tries to have Father Frank Adamsky bless the house. That lasts for all of ten seconds before Anthony flips out and throws the priest out.

When he gets to his car, the door is open and his Bible is torn apart. Clearly — all is not well. Again — the family is a mess before the Devil even gets involved. Dad is overly strict and abuse, mom clings to the Church and Sonny and Patricia yearn to have sex with one another (seriously, their first interactions define the word creeptastic).

While everyone else goes to church, Sonny stays behind and is taken over by a demonic force. The film nearly descends into body horror as we see the creature take root inside him. Soon, he’s playing fashion photographer with his sister, a game that quickly turns into sex. Instead of her being upset, Patricia instead tells him that she loved it. Keep in mind these are pretty much the two main protagonists of the story, so the tale takes a very Flowers in the Attic turn.

As Sonny becomes more demonic, Patricia decides to confess to Father Adamsky, but breaks down before she can. At Sonny’s birthday party — a scene where this film layers on the insanity — he goes full demon as she freely tries to give herself to him. She decides to call the priest and confess everything, but Father Tom (Simon himself from Simon, King of the Witches, as well as the original version of The Town that Dreaded Sundown) takes the phone off the hook so the priests can go skiing (!!!).

That night, Sonny fully becomes possessed and murders his entire family with shotgun blasts as a voice tells him to “kill them all.” Father Adamsky blames himself and even after the church refuses to allow him to exorcise the demon, he still makes an attempt. The demon goes from Sonny into his soul and the Amityville House is put up for sale…setting up part one.

If you think this is a rough little movie — and trust me, it is — it was even worse in its original cut. Test audiences were assaulted by scenes where Anthony anally rapes his wife Dolores and where the incest is on graphic display (versus being hinted at with an “after the loving” quick cut). Damiano stated that he wanted to really upset viewers. Well, he succeeded, with those scenes going the way of the dodo. A very depraved dodo.

Originally, this film was to be based on John G. Jones’ book The Amityville Horror Part II, but producer Dino De Laurentiis, in conjunction with American International Pictures, decided to be inspired Hans Holzer’s book Murder in Amityville. George Lutz, whose family’s 28-day residency at the haunted house led to the original film, sued and got a disclaimer on the posters for the film stating “This film has no affiliation with George and Kathy Lutz”.”

Even better — Ed and Lorraine Warren, the demonologists who are the basis for The Conjuring series of films — served as the demonology advisors. One only wonders how they felt about the tremendous amount of blasphemy on display here.

This is a film where no traditional structure can save anyone. The family unit is a joke. The Catholic Church does not care. And the police only exist to pick up the pieces at the end. It’s a grimy, gory, gross little film that has more in common with the grindhouse than its major studio origins would suggest.

Long story made short: I love this fucking movie.

Reviews call this film one of Fulci’s worst films, using phrases like “an impenetrable mess” and “uninspired.” Even the liner notes on the Anchor Bay release say that the film “doesn’t add up.” Woah boy — that would put off anyone else. But me? I’m excited to dig in. Get it? Dig in.

Susie Hacker is in Egypt with her archaeologist father, George (Christopher Connelly, The Norseman, 1990: The Bronx Warriors, the Payton Place TV series), and journalist mother, Emily (Martha Taylor, better known as Laura Lenzi, who was in The Adventures of Hercules) when a blind woman gives her an amulet. Just as she takes it, her father is blinded while he enters a previously unexplored tomb (but not before he shoots the shit out of a snake).

They return to New York City, where we meet Susie’s younger brother, Tommy (oh fuck, it’s Giovanni Frezza, Bob from The House by the Cemetery), who didn’t go on the trip, and au pair Jamie Lee (boy, naming a babysitter Jamie Lee is in no way a coincidence, right? She’s played by Cinzia de Ponti from The New York Ripper). Susie and Tommy have somehow gained supernatural powers from the amulet (Susie could speak telepathically to her mother before she left Egypt). And laser beams blast George’s eyes, giving him back his vision.

Check out this brother and sister interaction, Tommy’s introduction to the film. Also, if you’re wondering why a little boy is dubbed with the voice of a small girl, then you’ve never watched a Fulci film before.

Susie also has a scorpion — referred to in the beginning as a symbol of death as George captures it to give it to his daughter as a gift — and is playing with it. Wiler, a colleague, talks to George about what he saw in the tumb.

Meanwhile, Emily is working with her wacky colleague Luke (Carlo de Mejo, City of the Living Dead, The Other Hell, The House by the Cemetery) at Time and Life on a story when Jamie Lee calls in a panic. She can’t unlock the kids’ bedroom door and when she tries to enter the room, she sees snakes. Also, we know Luke is wacky because he has on Groucho Marx glasses when we first see him, then he has on googly eyes later. Oh, Luke.

Meanwhile, a security guard is stuck in an elevator. He bloodies his fingers trying to open the doors — thanks, Fulci! — before the floor drops away.

Luke offers to enter the locked door, acting like a goofy magician, when he screams. Jamie Lee runs upstairs but he’s nowhere to be found. That’s because he’s been sucked into a dimensional gateway and is now in the deserts of Egypt, a place where that madcap ponce will eventually die from exposure and dehydration. The funniest thing? Everyone thinks it’s a practical joke. No one ever discusses it again! I mean, Jamie Lee finds a handful of sand in the room and sees scorpions walking all over the place, but all the kids care about is eating dinner. Cue the Fabio Frizzi (who also composed music for Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead, The Beyond and more) music! Obviously, this was all some kind of practical joke, right? Why should anyone call the police?

Speaking of that Frizzi music, it plays as we see Susie’s hand begin to smoke and burn her bed. Then, she levitates. Nothing at all strange, please move along!

Jamie Lee then takes the kids to Central Park, where they all take Polaroids — note to millennials, selfies used to take three minutes to develop. A woman finds one of the photos, which ends up being the amulet instead of the kids. She shows the photo to Adrian Marcato (Cosimo Cinieri, Murder Rock and The New York Ripper), who puts his name and number on the Polaroid and ensures that the woman gives it to Mrs. Hacker. He’s a mysterious man with a mysterious study filled with mysterious books.

Susie and Tommy have now learned how to go on voyages, trips that allow them to appear and reappear at will. Not everyone is able to do this — Jamie Lee goes on a voyage and never returns. And more weirdness starts happening — George’s colleague Wiler looks at the Polaroid of the amulet and then a snake appears and bites him. We even get an awesome snake POV camera in this scene, which I reacted to with pure, ebullient joy. That same photo teleports into Susie’s hand as she has a fit and collapses. Also — how did Fulci, in a film filled with eyeball symbolism, resist the urge to have the snake bite the old man in the eyeball? What a show of restraint!

Groege and Emily decide to go to Macato’s antique shop, which is filled with stuffed birds. And he’s stuffing another one while talking to them. He explains the evil inside the amulet and how it has now infected their daughter and son.

They find the amulet — and a live scorpion that everyone just kind of ignores — in Susie’s bedroom door. She knocks out all of the lights in her room and appears covered in a blue glow before she faints. Marcato appears and tries to link minds with Susie, but he can’t handle the strain. He falls to the ground, bleeding and foaming at the mouth. He’s able to link minds with George, though, showing him the Egypt that his children have been visiting and tells him that Susie is trapped by the stone.

Susie goes into a coma, where she is examined by Dr. Forrester (Dr. Clayton Forrester? No, but he is played by director Lucio Fulci, listed as anonymous in the credits), who finds a cobra mark in her x-rays.

Tommy is left alone in the apartment, his eyes intercut with Marcato’s, who is concentrating on the amulet (there’s some nice Bava-esque blue to red lighting here, with tight shots of the psychic’s eyeballs). Suddenly, blood pours through a wall and Jamie Lee comes busting through, covered in gore (again, Fulci is really restraining himself here). Susie’s machines start to flatline before she awakens, choking and spitting up blood. Blue light links Tommy, Susie and Marcato’s home as he recites an Egyptian spell.

Marcato tells George that his children are safe. He’s removed the curse and taken it upon himself, so that it will not harm anyone else. He asks that George throw the amulet into the deepest part of the river.

After an entire film of holding back on the geysers of fluid and exploding eyeballs that we know and love him for, Fulci goes insane with the ending. We see shadows of the dead birds come to life before they fly at Mercato, slashing at his face. He mixes in some pecking POV shots and then goes completely over the top with repeated shots and a slowly lifting zoom, mixed with more interwoven POV shots, leaving the antique store owner a bloody corpse. The camera pulls back on a slow jazz song as we see the dead man bleed out and lift high above the store, before zooming to one of the stuffed birds. If I’ve learned anything from a Fulci movie, it’s to never work in a library or antique bookshop, because animals are going to eat your face.

Seriously, this jazz song, it’s like the kind of interlude Billy Joel would play before starting “New York State of Mind.”

George throws away the amulet, but now we’re back in Egypt, repeating the cycle as another young girl is given another amulet.

Whew. Manhattan Baby was written by longtime Fulci collaborators and husband and wife duo Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Briganti. Originally called The Evil Eye and The Possession (it was also released as Eye of the Evil Dead), they settled on the changed title to evoke Rosemary’s Baby. Even the name Adrian Mercato comes from that film. He’s one of the witches mentioned in the book Rosemary reads, All of Them Witches, as he practiced black magic in the Bramford building and is the father of Roman Castevet. The budget would get cut throughout the film — as much as 75% — so that may be why the gore feels so restrained.

This is the final film that producer Fabrizio De Angelis and Fulci would work on together. Fulci disliked the film and felt that he had no choice but to make it; De Angelis was obsessed by it.

Manhattan Baby doesn’t seem like a failure to me. It makes good use of locations like the faux Egyptian pyramids and market, as well as New York City. And the restraint leads to a great climax. That said — it’s a mishmash of The Omen, The Exorcist and The Awakening, with a dash of The Birds. Sure, it’s not a great film or even a good one, but it’s an interesting one. And that’s what I want to watch!

UPDATE: This is streaming for free with an Amazon Prime membership!

A week of only watching Alien ripoffs? Sure. Sign me up. Along the way, I’ve got to explore some old favorites, unearth some dusty TV movie affairs and learned of the existence of 1982’s Forbidden World, another Roger Corman produced effort that uses Galaxy of Terror’s sets and Battle Beyond the Stars’ special effects.

Director Allan Holzman (Emmy winning director/editor of Steven Spielberg’s Survivors of the Holocaust) wanted a chance to direct, so he took to the sets of Galaxy, using equipment that still had a rental day left and filmed a seven-minute test footage sequence that not only convinced Corman to give him a chance, but became the opening of this film. According to the book that comes with the Shout Factory release of the film, Holzman shot 94 camera set-ups in one day to achieve the frenetic editing style of this sequence.

In the Wikipedia setup for this film, they report that this film was panned by critics as a “cheap, exploitive imitation Alien with sex, nudity, uneven editing, cheap special effects and an audio track that some found unpleasant.” This sounds like a beacon for me screaming, “SEE THIS FILM NOW.” I wouldn’t say the music is bad…it’s just a strange bit of electronic music that often feels like it doesn’t fit the film. And as for the choppy editing style, it’s as is this whole film as a battle between two movies. One, an art film packed with intriguing shots, quick cuts and oddly placed humor. Another a sleazy monster movie featuring plenty of sex scenes, women showering together and a toothy Giger-esque little buddy killing scientists.

Space marshal, problem solver and lady lover Mike Colby (Jesse Vint, Macon County Line, Chinatown and William Castle’s Bug) is awakened from space sleep by his robot SAM-104 and informed that they’re going to Xarbia, where scientists are trying to solve the universe-wide food crisis. However, Subject 20, their latest experiment, is killing everyone and everything,

That said — Mike more shows up and sleeps around than gets anything done. He’s on base for less than a moment before he’s in Dr. Barbara Glaser’s (June Chadwick, Jeanine Pettibone of This is Spinal Tap and Lydia from 80s TV fave V) boudoir. Moments later, he’s steaming up the scream with lab assistant Tracy (Dawn Dunlap of Laura and Barbarian Queen) while crew member Brian Beale plays a weird glass saxophone (and he’s played by Ray Oliver, who has an awesome quick turn as Dr. Death in Child’s Play).  Their sexy time is interrupted by the gory death of lab tech Jimmy Swift (Michael Bowen, better known as Pussy Wagon owner Buck in Kill Bill). whose corpse becomes absorbed by Subject 20, which divides it into gooey, bloody chunks. Mmm!

There’s an alien killing everyone. We should take a break and take a shower together. There’s no better time to do so.

Turns out Subject 20 was made by scientists who used some unethical methods, which leads the monster to believe that just eating humans is the best solution for a food shortage. Post-shower scenes, the female scientists try to just talk to the alien and see if they can get him to understand. All seems to go well until Subject 20 misunderstands the word coexist and it annihilates Dr. Glaser in a red hued bust of arterial spray.

It’s up to Mike, Tracy and scientist Dr. Cal Timbergen (Fox Harris, who is best known for playing J. Frank Parnell in Repo Man) to defeat the beast, which has now mutated into a creature that looks exactly like a Giger Alien. Harris is amazing in his small role, constantly hacking and coughing as he chews the scenery as the very definition of a mad scientist. He’s exactly what you want a character actor to be — even if he’s not in the film for long.

Movie legend claims that at a screening, producer Corman was angered by the audience laughing at the film, going so far as to punch one of them (who responded by dousing him with soda). This led to all of the humor being cut. The Mutant cut on the Shout Factory release retains those humorous scenes.

Plus, Death Waltz has put the soundtrack to this out on vinyl with a completely batshit cover which pleases me to no end. It’s…just take a look.

Forbidden World is a fast, cheap and weird little picture. It’s 77-minute running time flies by, the effects are fun and the story is, well, there isn’t much of one. But there’s a lot of fun to be had and this is a film well worthy of discovery.

UPDATE: You can now watch this for free with an Amazon Prime membership.

This was originally written for That’s Not Current. They never posted it — their loss is your gain.

Alien is a haunted house movie in space that has begat a slew of imitators, copycats and outright rip-offs. 1982’s Xtro, on the other hand, is truly a movie that has something for everyone, if everyone includes folks who want to see movie about a father reconnecting with his son, as well as a film where Maryam d’Abo is repeatedly naked, a kid discovers his psychic powers with a weird clown, an Alien-style birth scene of a fully-grown man being born out of a pregnant woman (“What is it with all the alien rape and birth scenes in these movies? What is wrong with people?” asked my wife), toys coming to life, a child hunting down people like The Omen…truly Xtro is about ten movies worth of ideas in one scuzzy, scummy exploitation fever dream.

I’ll do my best to summarize the plot, but at any point, you may declare, “You’re just making this shit up now,” I assure you that what follows is as close to the filmed truth as possible. It truly is such a weird film that it surprised even a jaded viewer such as myself.

Tony and his dad Sam (Phillip Sayer, The Hunger) are playing fetch with their dog. On the last stick though, much like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sam tossed the stick high into the air and the screen goes white as he gets abducted.

Three years later, the light appears in the sky again and an alien creature scurries across a British countryside road. It gets hit by a car, yet survives to kill the driver and his passenger, then find his way to a cottage where it impregnates the lady who resides there. Moments later, Sam is reborn, clawing his way out of the woman, even biting into a bloody umbilical cord before he leaves. This is ten minutes into the movie. And if you think this is the end of the craziness, read on….

Sam wants to find his son, who lives with his mother Rachel (Bernice Stegers, Macabre), her new boyfriend Joe (Sinon Nash, Brazil) and a French babysitter named Analise (the aforementioned d’Abo, The Living Daylights) whose sole job seems to be getting naked every time she is on screen. Sam has nightmares about his dad every single night, waking up soaked in blood. Oddly, it turns out that the blood isn’t his.

Sam finds Tony’s school and follows him home, where he ends up moving in. He can’t remember anything of the last three years. Joe hates this, as he’s due to marry Rachel and doesn’t want her ex around. It’d all be weird enough if Sam wasn’t eating Tony’s snake’s eggs and drinking his son’s blood — an act that teaches him how to use his alien powers, which include the ability to grow his toys and send them to kill people, like a human-sized Action Man soldier and a teddy bear clown that becomes a horrifying little person clown.

Joe and Rachel continue to grow apart as she takes old husband Sam to see their old house. Meanwhile, Analise should be watching Tony, but she’s naked. Again. And having sex. Again. Tony retaliates by getting the clown to knock her out and impregnates her with eggs, sealing her in a nest of spiderwebs. As her boyfriend comes in searching for her, he’s chased by a toy tank and then killed by a leaping black panther! No — really, this actually happens in the film, like they just had a black panther lying about and figured, well, why not? Tony then kills the building supervisor with a spinning toy, which elicits a shower of blood.

So where’s mom and now alien dad? Reconnecting, horizontally, at the bar. They make the alien/human love until Sam’s skin starts to come off, but he literally stays on top of her as his face decomposes. Good news — this is when her new boyfriend shows up! Sam reacts by screaming until the boyfriend’s ears explode and taking Tony to, well, somewhere, as they disappear in a flash of light.

Whew — got all that? Well, it gets crazier. The entire apartment is cast in white light as Rachel finds the eggs in a cooler. The black panther shows up again and if I’d have seen this in a theater, this would be the exact moment when I would stand up and cheer. Rachel lovingly holds the eggs and plays with it until the alien from the beginning kills her.

But that’s not the original ending! Director Harry Bromley Davenport wanted the film to end with Rachel coming back to a home filled with clones of Tony, but the effects didn’t look all that great. Too bad — that’s a much better ending than what we got!

Xtro is truly something else, filled with a lunatic synth score by Tok and Tok, made up of nightmare images and is a film that doesn’t seem to make any narrative sense, much like Phantasm. It also inverts Alien’s radical attack on men, having them be the ones impregnated, and having women be the target. Where Sam has gone to is up for interpretation — is it a Lovecraftian dimension above interests such as human morality or simply a trip to an alien world? Life in Xtro is cheap — merely a tool for Sam to be reborn and spread his seed. Future sequels did nothing to explain, as they have nothing to do with this film.

Roger Ebert referred to the film as “a completely depressing, nihilistic film, an exercise in sadness” and “it’s movies like this that give movies a bad name.” I didn’t see that at all — I see a film pushing itself to new limits of weirdness. There’s certainly no other film like Xtro and it slimily climbs, gnaws and bites its way out of the ripoff framework that inspired it, becoming a whole new form of film life.

Originally posted at http://www.thatsnotcurrent.com/xeroxenomorphs-xtro-1982/