As part of the films that the zombie shell corporation that was once FVI released on video by sandwiching the actual film between new credits and changing the title, Ator 2: The Blade Master became Cave Dwellers. For the credits for this film, the bottom half of the screen is cut off and a black background is placed over it to show the credits. Within the top half of the screen and within the end credits, footage is shown from the 1963 sword and sandal film Taur, il re della forza bruta. I think Joe D’Amato would be kind of amused by this level of rip-off magic.

Joe D’Amato wanted to make a prehistoric movie like Quest for Fire called Adamo ed Eva that read a lot like 1983’s Adam and Eve vs. The Cannibals. However, once he called in Miles O’Keefe to be in the movie, the actor said that he couldn’t be in the film due to moral and religious reasons. One wonders why he was able to work with Joe D’Amato, a guy who made some of the scummiest films around.

Born Aristide Massaccesi, this man of many names had his paws in everything from being a camera operator on Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World to cinematography on What Have You Done to Solange? before directing his own films like Death Smiles on a Murderer, Beyond the Darkness, Antropophagus, 2020 Texas Gladiators, Endgame and so many more. He also worked with porn stars like Rocco Siffredi on Tarzan X – Shame of Jane before being an early innovator of porn-based parodies/cover versions of other works of art, such as Shakespeare porn (Othello 2000), mythology (Hercules – A Sex Adventure), famous icons (Scarface, Amadeus Mozart) and, of course, plenty of looks into the deviance of the Roman empire.

This time around, Aristide Massaccesi is known as David Hills, for those keeping score.

Akronos has found the Geometric Nucleus and is keeping its secret safe when Zor (Ariel from Jubilee) and his men attack the castle. The old king begs his daughter Mila (Lisa Foster, who starred in the Cinemax classic Fanny Hill and later became a special effects artist and video game developer) to find his student Ator (O’Keefe).

Mila gets shot with an arrow pretty much right away, but Ator knows how to use palm leaves and dry ice to heal any wound, a scene which nearly made me fall of my couch in fits of giggles. Soon, she joins Ator and Thong as they battle their way back to the castle, dealing with cannibals and snake gods.

Somehow, Ator also knows how to make a modern hang glider and bombs, which he uses to destroy Zor’s army. After they battle, Ator even wants Zor to live, because he’s a progressive barbarian hero, but the bad guy tries to kill him. Luckily, Thong takes him out.

After all that, Akronos gives the Geometric Nucleus to Ator, who also pulls that old chestnut out that his life is too dangerous to share with her. He takes the Nucleus to a distant land and sets off a nuke.

Yes, I just wrote that. Because I just watched that. I love it, because it was shot with no script in order to be made in time to compete with Conan the Destroyer.

Directed by Elliott Hong and written by David B. Randolph and Tim Clawson, They Call Me Bruce? begins with a young Bruce watching his grandfather die and being unable to save him. He tells the boy that there is a beautiful woman in America who will take care of him. Then we see that Bruce (Johnny Yune) has become a chef in the U.S. and is struggling as he works for gangsters.

The gangsters figure that he’d be a great patsy to take their cocaine across the country, telling him that the woman he’s looking for is in New York. They provide him with a limo, a driver named Freddy (Raf Mauro) and places where he has to drop off his Chinese flour across the country. As to why he’s called Bruce, it’s because everyone is racist and thinks he looks like Bruce Lee.

Bruce is followed by Karmen (Margaux Hemingway), who works for a rival gang and wants to ruin his deliveries, as well as federal agent Anita (Pam Huntington), who has already bugged him and placed a tracking device on him.

They Call Me Bruce? was an HBO movie in my youth and by that, I mean it was on HBO all the time. Eight year old me laughed so hard when Bruce went into a telephone booth like Superman and came out dressed like a ninja. Older me, well, I still laughed.

There’s also a karate dojo where Bruce tries to train. The master there is John Fujioka, who was Shinyuki in American Ninja. Bruce barely makes it five minutes before he’s thrown out. That karate dojo would be used again for another movie, as its where Cobra Kai trains in The Karate Kid.

This played in 325 theaters and was a surprising success before going to cable and home video. Unfortunately, the sequel, They Still Call Me Bruce was not as popular.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Also known as The Coming, this movie starts in the late 1600s in Salem, as Ann Putnam (Susan Swift) is caught experimenting with black magic. To protect herself, she turns over the names of those who were also involved, sending Reverend Samuel Parris (John Peters) on an orgy of stake burnings to not only destroy all of the witches but to bring back the fear of the Lord in his worshippers. Meanwhile, in 1982, Loreen Graham (also Susan Swift) is possessed by Ann’s spirit.

By 1982, Bert I. Gordon had given up on giant animals after Empire of the Ants and would go on to make movies like Let’s Do It, The Big Bet, Secrets of a Psychopath and Satan’s Princess. That said, along the way, he’d made Picture Mommy Dead and Necromancy, so he was about more than Costco sized vermin.

Ann Putnam is a real person who, at the end of her life, tried to atone for all the people who died at her hands — well, as the result of her identifying them — and said that they were innocent. As for Gordon, making this near the end of a long career, he’s put together a movie that can’t decide if it wants to be supernatural or a dream. He’s still making an occult movie that could play as a made for TV film minus all the profanity and gore the genre had embraced by 1982.

In this film. Putnam can only save a young girl by changing history and bringing someone back in time to fix it. It honestly makes no sense but had enough eerie visuals to keep me watching. There’s a skeleton-handed killer who the movie never really explains and we wonder who the protagonist is, who the villain is and how we’ll get the story all figured out. I wonder if Gordon ever divined it himself.

You can watch this on YouTube.

When Robert E. Howard created Conan, it was popular for its time as a pulp character. By the time of his creator’s suicide in 1936, Conan had appeared in 21 complete stories, 17 of which had been published, as well as a number of unfinished tales. After years of the copyright to the character passing around, Lancer released a series of paperbacks with dynamic Frank Frazetta covers that introduced the Cimmerian barbarian to an entirely new audience.

In 1970, Marvel Comics began adapting the Howard tales, arguably increasing the reach of the character even further than the original books. Then, in 1975, Edward R. Pressman (who also produced Christmas Evil) and Edward Summer started working on getting the books onto the silver screen. They had Oliver Stone writing it and Arnold Schwarzenegger for the lead, but couldn’t get major studios interested.

However, in 1979, they sold the project to Dino De Laurentiis and John Milius was picked as the director. Combining several Howard stories, the filming took place in Spain and the entire film was based on Frazetta’s artwork. After a year of editing — and plenty of gore being cut out — the film was released to $100 million dollars of box office, which increased thanks to home video and cable. Some don’t consider it a blockbuster, but how else would there so many ripoffs released in its wake?

The film begins with a sword being forged by a blacksmith who shows it to his son, the young Conan, and tells him the Riddle of Steel. To sum it up, “Flesh grows weak. Steel becomes brittle. But the will is indomitable”. He tells his son that everyone will fail him, but he can always count on steel.

The Cimmerians are soon murdered by a band of warriors led by Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones). This villain is a combination of several Howard characters. While his name comes from one of Kull of Atlantis’ villains, he is similar to Thoth-Amon, leading an army of suicidal warriors devoted to their king.

Conan’s father is killed by dogs and his sword is given to Doom, who hypnotizes and then beheads Conan’s mom (Nadiuska, who was also in Guyana: Cult of the Damned) in front of him. Our hero is then sold into slavery, chained to a mill stone known as the Wheel of Pain. While other children die, Conan lives to become a monster of a man, consigned to the gladiator pits and used as a stud to create more soldiers. Yet Conan becomes a favorite of the men he has been sold to and is educated in the East before being freed.

Conan wanders the world as a free man, finding an ancient sword and meeting a witch who gives him a prophecy of his future. This scene kinda blows my mind, because Conan is so good at having sex that he turns the witch into a demon and then throws her into the fire. That’s how good Conan is in the sack.

Conan befriends Subotai (surfing legend Gerry Lopez), a Hyrkanian thief, and Valeria, a female mercenary. Her name comes from Conan’s companion in the story “Red Nails”, while her personality and fate are based on Bêlit, the pirate queen of “Queen of the Black Coast.” She’s played by Sandahl Bergman, who is also in She, a totally ridiculous movie that I want more people to love as much as me.

In the city of Zamora, the trio steal from the Tower of Serpents and Valeria and Conan seal their union by making love. Soon, they’re captured by the soldiers of King Osrić (Max von Sydow), who only ask that three bring back his daughter. Subotai and Valeria refuse, but Conan’s hatred of Doom sends him to the Temple of Set.

There, he’s captured and tortured, as Doom insults his family and crucifies him on the Tree of Woe. Before our hero dies, Subotai rescues him and brings him to Akiro, the Wizard of the Mounds. He’s played by Mako, who was also the voice of Master Splinter in 2007’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The wizard summons demons that heal our hero but extract a heavy toll that Valeria agrees to pay.

Finally, our heroes go back to Doom’s temple and unleash their full vengeance. However, Doom himself becomes a giant snake and slithers away, because this movie is both insane and awesome. As the trio rides away, Doom shoots Valeria with a snake arrow and she dies in Conan’s arms, paying the toll that the wizard warned her about.

She is burned at the Mounds. As Conan stares at the fire, having lost the love of his life, Subotai cries for his friend, explaining that “A Cimmerian won’t cry, so I cry for him.” How is a film so testosterone and gore filled so poetic at times?

Our hero lays waste to Doom’s troops and when Rexor (former Oakland Raider Ben Davidson, who also played the bouncer in Behind the Green Door), one of the largest of them, almost kills him Valeria reappears as a valkyrie to save him for the briefest of seconds. Subotai saves the princess and Conan finds his father’s sword and breaks it in combat. Look for Sven Ole Thorsen in this too as Thorgrim. Sven has dated Grace Jones since 1990, but has been in an open relationship with her since 2007. He’s also in Conan the Destroyer and The Running Man.

That night, Conan comes back to the Temple and is greeted with open arms by Doom, who tries to mentally stop him. Conan resists and beheads his enemy with his father’s broken sword. He has solved the Riddle of Steel: you must become the steel and only rely upon yourself.

Conan burns down the Temple of Set and returns the princess to her father. The movie then shows us Conan on the throne of an empire, letting us know that one day he will rule the entire land.

No one could play Conan but Arnold, who started growing his hair in 1979 for this part. He trained for this movie like he did for his bodybuilding competitions: weapons training, martial arts training, horse riding lessons, even sword fighting with an 11-pound broadsword two hours a day for three months, as well as how to fall and roll from 15-foot drops. He also got 5% of the movie’s profits, a pretty hefty sum.

I love this movie. I adore the fact that Conan doesn’t speak until 20 minutes into the film and doesn’t speak for the last 20 minutes either. It’s awesome that Valeria is just as strong of a fighter — and maybe even stronger in spirit — as Conan. Every 80’s sword and sorcery movie is in debt to this, as much as Arnold claims that his performance is owed to peplum star Steve Reeves.

The set from Arrow Video has, well, the most extras I’ve ever seen. It all starts with a brand new 4K restoration from the original negative by Arrow Films, a double-sided fold-out poster, six double-sided collectors’ postcards and illustrated collectors’ booklet featuring new writing by Walter Chaw and John Walsh, and an archive set report by Paul M. Sammon.

There are three versions of the film via seamless branching: the Theatrical Cut (127 mins), the International Cut (129 mins) and the Extended Cut (130 mins); archive feature commentary by director John Milius and star Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Extended Cut, brand new commentary by genre historian Paul M. Sammon, author of Conan: The Phenomenon on the Extended Cut and a newly assembled isolated score track in lossless stereo for the Extended Cut.

The extras blu ray has even more, such as Conan Unchained: The Making of Conan, an archive documentary from 2000 featuring interviews with Schwarzenegger, Milius, Stone, Jones, Lopez, Bergman, Poledouris and several others; new interviews with production artist William Stout, costume designer John Bloomfield, special effects crew members Colin Arthur and Ron Hone, Jorge Sanz, Jack Taylor, assistant editor Peck Prior, visual effects crew members Peter Kuran and Katherine Kean, filmmaker Robert Eggers on the film’s influence on The Northman, John Walsh, author of Conan the Barbarian: The Official History of the Film and Alfio Leotta, author of The Cinema of John Milius. There are also archival features on the literary and comic book roots of the movie, an interview with sword master Kiyoshi Yamasaki, on-set cast and crew interviews, A Tribute to Basil Poledouris, a rarely-seen electronic press kit from 1982, featuring over half an hour of on-set footage and cast and crew interviews, outtakes, image galleries, trailers and Conan the Barbarian: The Musical, an affectionate comic tribute to the film by Jon & Al Kaplan.

“Crom, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good men or bad, why we fought, or why we died. No, all that matters is that this set is amazing and we must thank you for it!”

You can get Conan the Barbarian on blu ray from MVD and 4K UHD from Arrow Video. They also have the Conan Chronicles with both films on 4K UHD and blu ray.

I Know That You Know That I Know stars its director, Alberto Sordi, as Fabio Bonetti, a banker who has been married to his wife Livia (Monica Vitti) for more than twenty years. All he cares about these days are football and watching TV. And then they meet a private detective (Giuseppe Mannajuolo) who has been filming them for two weeks, as he has been hired by the rich Vitali to watch his wife Elena (Micaela Pignatelli), but accidentally filmed them.

That’s when he shares what he has learned: their teenage daughter Veronica (Isabella De Bernardi) is on drugs, Livia is cheating on Fabio and, well, Fabio has days to live thanks to a mystery disease. That’s when Fabio decides to change his life. He’s never shown love to his daughter, who dresses in his clothes to shock him. He chose football matches over his wife and pushed her into another man’s bed. So he decides that before he dies, he’s going to fix his family.

Written by Sordi with Augusto Caminito (The Designated Victim) and Rodolfo Sonego (Vacanze di Natale ’91), this raises the same question I always have for American sitcoms. How could Monica Vitti — she was Modesty Blaise! — end up with Alberto Sordi? Some guys have all the luck.

You can watch this on YouTube.

A festival in Naples is in trouble. The scaffolding outside the theater has crashed down, then a postcard arrives and says that anyone involved will be killed. Journalists Michele Giuffrida (Lello Arena) and Lisa Sole (Maddalena Crippa) start to track down who sent that warning.

Whoever that killer is, they have it out for Italian saxophone player James Senese, who plays himself, and actor Massimo Troisi, who also wrote the script, also playing himself. How dare they appear in the Nuova Napoli festival?

You don’t see many movies where people playing themselves get killed, but that’s what happens as Senese is hit by a car and Troisi is strangled and has a pizza jammed into his mouth. As to who is behind it all, it’s the person you would least expect, which is how so many giallo movies operate. The killer is also stuck on the song “Funiculi, Funicula” which was written in 1880 by Luigi Denza and Peppino Turco to celebrate the first funicular railway on Mount Vesuvius.

No Thanks, Coffee Makes Me Nervous is about a time when Naples was becoming known for new things and changing, which is something the killer is against. The first movie of director Lodovico Gasparini, it was written by Michael Pergolani and Troisi.

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.

Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Bambi (Eva Arnez) is a female karate fighter and pro wrestler who no longer loves combat. Barney (Barry Prima) is a martial artist who helps her find the eye of the tiger again. That’s needed because she needs to raise money for an operation to save the life of her brother.

Or maybe not, because 1982’s Jopi Burnama-directed Perempuan Bergairah (Passionate Woman) was remixed by Troma’s Charles Kaufman. If your idea of the height of humor is repeated bathroom jokes, you’ll love this. I must admit that I did laugh when a woman yelled when Bambi wins a fight, “Come see me tonight, I have a vibrator!” and Bambi replies,”Mine has all five speeds!”

Now for the real description of the original from IMDB: “Renny Basuki (Eva Arnaz) is a young woman and a former judo champion who, after her father’s demise, tries to look after her impoverished family. When her younger brother is diagnosed with a deadly disease, she is desperate to afford his surgery costs. One day, Indra (Prima), a professional wrestling manager, offers Renny and her friend Mia (Diana Suarkom) a place in his female wrestling troupe. They agree but Renny’s mother disapproves her wrestling career.”

As much as I love how much pro wrestling this has, not to mention a snake in the bath scene that shot for shot rips off A Nightmare On Elm Street plus a man’s face being erased by acid and someone else getting blown up with explosive throwing stars and then brass knuckles being used to punch someone’s eyeball out of their head, I am not a fan of Barry Prime being made into Elvis.

Then again, because of this movie, I hunted down the original.

Troma also made Ferocious Female Freedom Fighters Part 2 from another movie with Arnaz in it, Barang Terlarang (Violent Killer).

You can watch this on Tubi.

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.

Would you like to have me write about the movies of your choice? It’s simple!

1. Go to our Ko-Fi site and donate. There’s no set amount and I won’t tell you what to do. In fact, if you just keep reading for free, we can still be friends.
2. Join as a monthly member for just $1. That makes you a Little B&S’er.
3. As a Medium B&S’er at just $3 a month, if you pick a movie or a director, I’ll write about them for you. In fact, I’ll do one for each month you subscribe and even dedicate the post to you.
4. For $5 a month, you basically get some major power. As a Big B&S’er, I’ll write an entire week on any subject you’d like. How awesome would that be? In fact, I’ll do it for every month you’re a member. Do you think any of your other movie sites will do that for you?

Where could Steve Martin and Carl Reiner go after The Jerk and The Man with Two Brains? How about to the world of film noir?

At lunch with Reiner and screenwriter George Gip, Martin discussed using a clip from an old film as part of a story he was writing. From that came the idea to use old clips throughout a movie to remix, recut and reframe an entirely new narrative that would place Martin into the world of film noir, using some of those that helped make those classic films, like costume designer Edith Head*, who made more than twenty suits and production designer John DeCuir, who designed 85 sets for the film.

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid casts Martin as Rigby Reardon, who comes to the aid of cheese heiress Juliet Forrest (Sela Ward) after the mysterious death of her father. Throughout the narrative, they come into contact with all manner of famous actors and characters, including Alan Ladd as The Exterminator who attacks Martin (taken from This Gun for Hire), Barbara Stanwyck from Sorry, Wrong Number, Ray Milland from The Lost Weekend, Ava Gardner footage taken from both The Killers and The Bribe, Burt Lancaster from The Killers, Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe using scenes from The Big Sleep, In a Lonely Place and Dark Passage, Cary Grant from Suspicion, Ingrid Bergman from Notorious, Veronica Lake** from The Glass Key, Bette David from Deception, Lana Turner footage from Johnny Eager and The Postman Always Rings Twice, Edward Arnold from Johnny Eager, Kirk Douglas from Walk Alone, Fred MacMurray from Double Indemnity, James Cagney from White Heat, Joan Crawford from Humoresque and Charles Laughton and Vincent Price from The Bribe. Whew!

These eighteen movies*** — plus footage shot at Culver City’s Laird International Studios, the same place where Suspicion, Rebecca and Spellbound were all made — create a narrative all its own, much how beats and samples come together to make a new song within the world of hip hop.

There’s so much detail in this movie, which is because of the talents of the filmmakers, including  director of photography Michael Chapman , who worked with Technicolor to seamlessly match the old film clips with his new footage.

I find it really intriguing that Martin came out of another period piece, Pennies from Heaven, into this movie, while Sela Ward played the woman at the center of the modern noir Sharky’s Machine before this.

* *The film was dedicated to Head, who died soon after it was completed, with the credits saying, “To her, and to all the brilliant technical and creative people who worked on the films of the 1940’s and 1950’s, this motion picture is affectionately dedicated.”

**Cheryl Rainbwaux Smith also was the double for Lake in this scene, which I heartily endorse.

*** Nineteen if you count the car crash in the beginning, which came from Keeper of the Flame.

Director Mario Bianchi made some interesting movies. Kill the Poker Player AKA Creeping Death combines the Italian West with giallo. He was the director of the “Lucio Fulci Presents” films Sodoma’s Ghost and The Murder Secret. Nightmare in Venice, which adapts Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle before Eyes Wide Shut. He wrote Tragic Ceremony. And he finished his career doing adult under the names Nicholas Moore, David Bird, Tony Yanker and Martin White, making movies like Sexy Killer, a remake of La Femme Nikita and The Castle of Lucretia.

Producer Gabriele Crisanti and screenwriter Piero Regnoli wanted to remake Malabimba The Malicious Whore and even brought back Mariangela Giordano, who had stopped working with Cristiani and dating him after that movie, saying that she felt “used, abused and exploited.” That should tell you how far the movie went, as she had worked with the producer on movies like Giallo In Venice and Patrick Still Lives, two of the most reprehensible late 70s Italian exploitation films, not to mention her stunning scene in Burial Ground where she allows her zombie son to feed on her bare breast.

Where the original film was very sleazy, it did not go all the way into hardcore. This one goes all the way and had softcore (La Bimba di Satana) and hardcore (Orgasmo di Satana) versions.

In a remote Spanish castle, the Aguilar family is mourning the passing of Countess Maria (Marina Hedmann, who appeared in Emanuelle in America and Images in a Convent as well as adult films) whose body lies in state. The family doctor (Giancarlo Del Duca) claims that her death was from a heart attack, yet everyone thinks her husband Antonio (Aldo Sanbrell) murdered her.

Everyone has been seduced by Maria, from the doctor to Antonio’s wheelchair-bound brother Ignazio (Alfonso Gaita) to the nun, Sol (Giordan) who cares for the ill uncle. The family butler Isidro (Joe Danvers) brings her spirit back into Maria’s teenage daughter Mira (Jaqueline Dupré) and helps her get revenge.

Sanbrell had issues working with adult stars. In Roberto Curti’s Italian Gothic Horror Films 1980-1989, he has a quote that says, “We had to shoot a love scene, Marina and I… Well, I was lying on the bed, waiting for her, and when she showed up we started making out; after a while I realized that she was doing it for real and I had to stop her.” Sambrell contacted Crisanti to say that he could not work under these conditions and he was replaced in the lovemaking scenes by Gaita, who also worked in pornography.

Not to be outdone with just being outright filth, the poster also rips off Boris Vellejo’s “The Vampire’s Kiss.”