EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of the Cannon films that I can’t track down. If you have it, let me know! Otherwise, here are some facts on this movie so that Cannon Month can keep on moving.
Known in Italy as Un complicato intrigo di donne, vicoli e delitti (A Complicated Intrigue of Women, Alleys and Crimes), this was directed by Lina Wertmüller, who made the original Swept Away.
A hostel owner named Annunziata (Ángela Molina) is attacked, but before the man can assault her, he’s killed by someone in the shadows who injects him in the, well, balls with a hyperdermic needle. This becomes the signature move of a serial killer who is taking out drug dealers all over the city and only Annunziata may be able to identify who it is, but at the same time, her son is entering the drug trade, which makes him a target of the killer.
Harvey Keitel is the other actor in this film who may be most recognizable to American audiences. I’m excited to actually find this one, as seeing Wertmüller’s take on the Italian crime film intrigues me.
Sergio Corbucci may have made some of the most violent Westerns of all time, but his brother Bruno made comedies like the Nico Giraldi series with Tomas Milan — starting with The Cop in Blue Jeans — and Miami Supercops with Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.
This take on Aladdin stars Luca Venantini as Al Haddin and if that makes you laugh, well, this is for you. It kind of makes me wistful that Janet Ågren (Eaten Alive!, City of the Living Dead) plays his mother. That said, he lives in poverty with her and his grandfather before finding a lamp in the antique shop he works in. He rubs it, Bud Spencer appears as the genie and we have a movie.
The wishes that Al gets help him win over the love of his young life, Patricia O’Connor (Bud’s daughter Diamy) and help her cop father when the genie just busts into a building, shrugs off point blank bullets and brings in the mob guys that he’s been trying to arrest. Of course, Al’s mother works in a mob nightclub, so she gets kidnapped and her son has to save the day.
The end of this movie makes a sharp pivot, the kind that makes sense when you realize that it is both Italian and a Cannon movie. The genie is nearly dissected because people think he’s an alien and the police chief — of what I assume is Miami — demands that one of the wishes to be taking out all the military power of the world so his police force can rule the world. This sounds nightmarish and Al and the genie wisely jump on a magic carpet and go throw the lamp in the Bermuda Triangle. I have no idea where any of this came from.
Spencer did TV after this, not appearing in another movie until 1991’s Un piede in paradiso AKA Speak of the Devil. Directed by Enzo Barboni and written by Enzo and Bud’s sons Marco Barboni and Giuseppe Pedersoli, it was also shot in Miami and has Carol Alt in its cast.
Directed and written by Kaizô Hayashi — who in addition to films like Zipang, The Most Terrible Time In My Life and The Stairway to the Distant Past owns Bar Tantei, a detective themed bar in Kyoto, Japan — To Sleep as to Dream is the story of two private detectives searching for an actress who has been trapped within the reel of a silent ninja film.
Private eye Uotsuka (Shiro Sano, Shin Godzilla) and his sidekick Kobayashi (Koji Otake) have been hired by Madame Cherryblossom (Fujiko Fukamizu) to find her missing daughter Bellflower (Moe Kamura, who also composed music for this movie), which leads them to a film studio and a vision of a samurai movie with no ending, a series of actors from Japan’s movie past and sets by Takeo Kimura, the art designer of movies like Tokyo: The Last War, A Killer Without a Grave and many more, as well as being the oldest person to ever direct a movie, 2008’s Dreaming Awake at the age of 90.
A near-silent film with often only music and commentary by a benshi performer, someone who would narrate silent films for the audience, all to tell the story of a world where detectives and magicians attempt to rescue or restrain Bellflower. The M. Pathé and Company villains are obsessed with film — and aren’t we, too? — through a film that I was certain did come from Japan’s past long before 1986.
Madame Cherryblossom keeps watching a movie with no ending, either in her memory or reality and like much of Japan’s silent film past, it may have been lost to age or warfare. The film that emerges casts her missing daughter as the goal for our hero, but can real life be a love story?
I’d never heard of this film and it just hit me perfectly. Be sure to seek it out and do the same for yourself.
The Arrow Video blu ray is the first time this movie has ever been released in that format. It has a high definition 1080p presentation with the original uncompressed mono audio and optional English subtitles. There are two commentary tracks, one with Japanese film experts Tom Mes and Jasper Sharp as well as an archival commentary with director Kaizo Hayashi and lead actor Shiro Sano. There’s also a new interview with Shiro Sano; Talking Silents: Benshi Midori Sawato Talks, a brand new interview on early Japanese film culture and the art of the benshi silent film commentator; an exclusive benshi performance for the movie witin the movie, a feature on the film’s restoration, a selection of silent jidai-geki period drama films from the Kyoto Toy Museum, trailers for the original release and the English-language restored re-release, an image gallery, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by David Downton and a booklet featuring new writing on the film by Aaron Gerow.
You can also watch this on ARROW PLAYER. Head over to ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.
Unfortunately, I can’t find this movie anywhere, but Cannon Month demands that every movie be covered in some way. So let’s take a look at the info I can find on this film until I can find a way to watch this French-Italian movie.
What if John the Baptist’s battles with Herod (Tomas Milian, Don’t Torture a Duckling, The Four of the Apocalypse, Nico Giraldi in Bruno Corbucci’s series of eleven crime comedies) and Salomé’s (Jo Champa) seductive gyrations for the head of the prophet all took place during World War II? That’s exactly what this movie is seeking the answers to. And oh yes, it’s also a musical.
Directed by Claude d’Anna, who would make an opera version of MacBeth the following year, this played the 1986 Cannes Film Festival, during which we can assume that Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus were trying to sell Over the Top, Elmore Leonard’s La Brava (never made and set to star Dustin Hoffman), Superman 4: The Quest for Peace, John Travolta in an unnamed project, Spider-Man directed by Joe Zito, Chuck Norris in a comedy called Kick and Kick Back, 52 Pick-Up, an untitled Roman Polanski project, Masters of the Universe, the unreleased Housekeeping, StreetSmart, Duet for One, Rumpelstiltskin, Number One with a Bullet, a musical remake of Zorba the Greek with Anthony Quinn, the unmade The White Slave, the never made Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (the trailer simply has Leatherface oiling up his chainsaw with blood), American Ninja 2, a Michael Winner-directed Captain America that I wish had been filmed, Tough Guys Don’t Dance, the Godfrey Reggio and Phillip Glass created, George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola produced Powaqqatsi wich was called North South, Norman Mailer’s King Lear directed by Jean-Luc Godard, a potential sequel to Joe titled Citizen Joe, a robot movie called Too Much, a Dolly Dots music movie called Give a Girl a Break that was renamed Dutch Treat and released by Cannon, Sinbad of the Seven Seas, a kaiju movie named It Ate Cleveland, River of Death and Ben, Bonzo and Big Bad Joe with Bud Spencer, which was made as Going Bananas with Dom DeLuise.
Seriously, check out this Cannon reel which takes clips from other movies, publicity photos and high energy voiceovers to sell you on movies that Cannon may or may not make.
The unsolicited screenplay was written by actor Gregory Fleeman and documentarian Robert T. Megginson and they’d never tried to sell a movie before. When producer Jack Wiener first read it, they told him they saw it as a made-for-TV movie, but he encouraged them to make it into an actual film, which he produced along with Dodi Fayed.
Yes, the same one who died alongside Princess Diana.
Director Robert Mandel (School Ties, The Substitute, the pilot of The X-Files) isn’t an action movie director yet he’s turned the script into a great action film with real heart.
F/X expert Roland “Rollie” Tyler (Bryan Brown) has been hired by the government to fake the murder of mob informant Nicholas DeFranco (Jerry Orbach) so that he isn’t murdered before he testifies against his former crime associates. Edward Mason (Mason Adams), the agent in charge, tasks Tyler with firing the shots at DeFranco, a job for which he’ll be paid $30,000. Yet when he’s picked up after the job, he’s told that they want no loose ends and the agents try to kill him.
He escapes, but everywhere he goes, people close to him die, including his girlfriend Ellen (Diane Venora). Her murder puts Detective Leo McCarthy (Bryan Dennehy) on the case. He’s been after DeFranco for years and wants to put him in jail instead of witness protection.
F/X has the twists and turns that I love in a mystery film. Plus, between Orbach, Dennehy, Brown and Tom Noonan, so many of my favorite actors show up in this movie. The special F/X idea is pretty great, too. You can see posters for Zombi and Fade to Black in Tyler’s studio, plus he mentions working on I Dismember Mama.
F/X 2 (1991)
Richard Franklin came to America to make movies after success in his native Australia with films like Fantasm, Patrick and Road Games. He made Psycho II, Cloak and Dagger, Link and this movie here before he went back home.
The script was written by Bill Condon, who also wrote Strange Behavior and Strange Invaders before moving on to direct movies like Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, Chicago, Dreamgirls and the final two Twilight films.
Rollie Tyler (Brown) has moved from simply practical effects to building a robot clown named Bluey which is controlled by a telemetry suit. This leads to an amazing fight where both Tyler and his robot are both battling a henchman. But before we get to that, we get to why Tyler is in another adventure.
This time, his girlfriend Kim (Rachel Ticotin, Con Air)’s policeman ex-husband has been assigned to stakeout a killer who has already murdered one model. He asks him to entrap the man so they can get him off the streets, but the cop gets killed and Tyler is the only one with the evidence showing that he was murdered. He calls his old friend Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) for help.
The real story concerns stolen solid gold medallions that were cast by Michelangelo which show the figures in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Now, Tyler has to use his F/X abiities and Leo his detective skills to get those coins back to the Vatican while avoiding the killers on their trail.
While not as good as the first, the team of Brown and Dennehy is a winning one. Both F/X and F/X 2 aired often on cable when I was young, so they’re comfort food to enjoy whenever I need them thanks to their blu ray release.
The Kino Lorber blu ray release of F/X and F/X 2 has an on-camera interview with F/X director Robert Mandel and making of features and trailers for both movies. You can get it directly from Kino Lorber.
Directed, written and starring Michal Bat-Adam, this adaption of The Lover, a novel by A. B. Yehoshua, had been in development by Cannon for nearly a decade, with Boaz Davidson and Dan Wolman both attached to direct at one point or another.
The novel was a big deal because of the taboos it broke in Israel, telling the stories of a married woman and her lover, a married father and his daughter’s friend, and the forbidden love between a Jewish girl and her Arabic lover.
Adam (Yehoram Gaon) and Asia (Bat-Adam) are a sexless married couple. She quickly falls into the bed of a tutor named Gavriel (Roberto Pollack), who agrees to help her if Adam fixes his grandmother’s car. The young man disappears during the Yom Kippur War and Adam, his daughter Dafi and their co-worker Naim all try to find him, which ends up with Dafi and Naim falling in love and one of her schoolmates throwing herself at the older man.
The Lover was a media scandal in Israel, as all of the infidelity in the movie is presented as normal. Bat-Adam nearly gave up filmmaking, but the film was a success and today she is known as one of the queens of Israeli cinema.
Lina Romay is Lulu and the title refers to a part of her anatomy, so this translates as Lulu’s Talking Ass and if that makes you laugh, then you’re ready for what Jess Franco made. After all, her butt talks and explains how it’s upset that other parts of her body get more attention.
I mean, this movie has a smash cut to said talking ass smoking a cigarette and I just started laughing like a maniac. At this point, one assumes, Franco couldn’t even remember the censorship of General Francisco Franco’s Nationalist leadership.
In 2008, Franco was awarded an honorary Goya Award, which is the Spanish version of the Academy Awards. I tell you this to prepare you for the scene where Lina makes love to an Oscar.
So you know, when you’ve seen it all, you should probably see this.
EDITOR’S NOTES: We originally covered this movie on January 24, 2021. It’s Jess Franco month so et’s talk about it again.
Alain Payet — working under the name James Gartner* — mostly worked in adult films and supposedly directed this, but a few minutes in and you realize that no, you’re watching another Jess Franco movie, which is even more apparent when you realize that even though he didn’t put his name on as a director, he used two aliases for writing (story by Jeff Manner, screenplay by A.L. Mariaux) and Lina Romay shows up as one of the Amazon guards.
Man, this movie is — as is obvious — a mess, but it’s also about Liana Simpson (Analía Ivars, Panther Squad, Franco’s Lust for Frankenstein), whose parents were killed by the Golden Temple Amazons — we get to watch it more than once — and she was raised by the creatures of the jungle before getting her chimp Rocky and a witch doctor named Koukou (Stanley Kapoul, who is also in The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik-Yak, which is a much better movie of the same genre).
There’s also Antonio Mayans (who was in Revenge of the Alligator Girls and directed its sequel), William Berger in a loincloth, Emilio Linder from Christinaand Monster Dog, Alicia Príncipe (The Erotic Story of O) and Eva León (Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, Bahía Blanca) as Rena, the leader of the Amazons, who has an all gold everything matchy matchy fashion ensemble.
There’s also the same deathtrap from Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, so this has that going for it.
Look — you’re gonna like Jess Franco or you’re going to be bored into insanity or if you’re me, you’re going to zone out and use his movies to improve your positive mental attitude and use his tics — long pauses, plenty of scenery, a near-total disregard for how to tell a story — to get closer to Nirvana. Join me, I guess.
*On Letterboxd, Kyle Faulkner drops some science on me by stating how Payet came on board when Eurocine bought this movie, took a bunch of Franco footage to reedit and added shots of women on horseback. This actually played theaters, which is destroying my brain.
Lee J. Thompson and Charles Bronson wore together several times. Six, to be exact, with this movie, St. Ives, The White Buffalo, Caboblanco, 10 to Midnight and The Evil That Men Do making up the full list of their collaborations.
Writer Gail Morgan Hickman’s (The Enforcer,Death Wish IV: The Crackdown) script was one that Cannon liked, but at this point, they’d started to overspend, so they weren’t forthcoming with the money the film would need, as producer Pancho Kohner, Thompson and Bronson. The team took the movie to took Hemdale and were immediately given the green light with a much better deal.
Cannon sued for breach of contract and claimed that they had already pre-sold most of the worldwide rights and stated that it would damage their company if someone else made it. After all, Cannon often pre-sold movies based on loglines and pasted together ads well before the movies were made.
A lawsuit was avoided, allowing Cannon to financed and released the movie, with Hemdale getting foreign video rights. As for Bronson, Kohner and Thompson, they got a three-movie deal with Cannon, which ended up being the aforementioned Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, Messenger of Death and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects.
Bronson plays Jack Murphy and at 65 years old, you really get the sense that just like his character, he’s exhausted. Indeed, he was often frustrated at the delays between takes and would shout, “Let’s shoot! Let’s shoot!” as he wanted to get back to his family. As for Murphy, he has no family, as his ex-wife (Angel Tompkins, who was the titular The Teacherand also was in The Farmer) has started dancing at a men’s club frequented by other cops, making him the target of their jokes. So he drinks away his days and wastes his nights watching the woman he chased away attract other men.
Meanwhile, a woman he put away named Joan Freeman (Carrie Snodgress, who Stallone wanted to be Adrian in Rocky, with Harvey Keitel as Paulie, but money was a major issue; she’s best known for her role in Diary of a Mad Housewife; Neil Young wrote the songs “A Man Needs a Maid,” “Harvest,” “Out on the Weekend” and “Heart of Gold” about her) is out of jail and conspiring to ruin his life, as if it can be further ruined. She begins killing those close to him — mostly cops, as she blames them just as much as him — ending with his ex. Soon Murphy’s headed for jail with many of the criminals he put there.
Somehow, as Murphy is first arrested, he’s handcuffed to Arabella McGee (Kathleen Wilhoite, Road House, Fire In the Sky), a potty mouthed homeless girl that he’d recently arrested. As she repeatedly verbally abuses Murphy with phrases like butt crust, monkey vomit, jizm breath, sperm bank, dildo nose and snot-licking donkey fart, Arabella doesn’t speak like anyone in any movie ever, which is why I find her so endearing and this movie just so delightfully odd. Wilhoite was a method actress and felt that probably her character should have looked more homeless, but she got to keep all of the designer clothes that her character wore, so that probably made wearing it in the film much easier.
Before fiming started, Thompson and Kohner coached Wilhoite all about how to best get along with the tempermental Bronson, which worked, because they got along well according to reports.
She also sang the movie’s theme song!
That said, she wasn’t the first choice for the role. Supposedly, Madonna was up for the role but wanted a million bucks. So was Joan Jett, who had just been in Light of Day. While she didn’t get the part, she ended up growing close to Bronson’s wife Jill Ireland. In a Q&A on her official fan site, Jett answered the question “How did the song, “Don’t Surrender” come about? And who is Jill Ireland?” with the following:
“Jill was Charles Bronson’s wife, also a wonderful actress. We met over the possibility of me co-starring with Charles B. in a movie. We became great friends, she turned me on to crystals, etc. and taught me a lot during our friendship. When she died, I was very upset, but channeled that (what I saw in Jill: strength, honor, dignity) and wrote “Don’t Surrender” with Desmond, inspired by Jill.”
Handcuffed together, the two go on the run, stealing a helicopter and landing on — and crashing through, Demonsstyle — the growhouse of some well-armed marijuana farmers, which gives Murphy the chance to save Arabella from a group assault, making me wonder if Michael Winner directed this movie. You can tell he didn’t because it’s quick, they don’t succeed and the camera doesn’t linger like a lunatic.
Then again, Thompson also made Kinjite…
Anyways, the duo ends up getting along better and better, with even the hint of romance by the end. They take up in the home of one of one of his old partners, but the killings move there too.
Murphy thinks that the killings are the result of a vendetta between him and mobster Frank Vincenzo (Richard Romanus) before making his way back to the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles, the same place where Freeman was arrested for shooting her boyfriend, a security guard at the building.
The Bradbury is a historic LA building and you may recognize it from noir movies like the original I, the Jury and D.O.A. as well as a more futuristic take on the genre, Blade Runner. The building demanded that no food or drink was permitted on set during filming, but not having craft services was worth it, because the close is tense, with the cops working for Vincenzo gunning for Murphy and Freeman stalking him with a crossbow and then attacking him with an axe.
Murphy’s Law is also filled with roles for plenty of great tough guy actors, like Lawrence Tierney, Robert F. Lyons and Bill Henderson. It’s a movie that both embraces and escapes many of the things you expect from a Bronson movie It’s violent, profane and removed from reality, but I love how it has both a female protagonist and antagonist, lightening the normal testosterone-filled world of Bronson just enough to make things a little different. The dialogue is beyond ridiculous, which made me love this movie even more. It’s beyond quotable, including the line, “Don’t fuck with Jack Murphy!”
You can get the new blu ray release of this film from Kino Lorber. It has some great extras, like commentary by Wilhoite and film historian Nick Redman, an interview with Robert F. Lyons, two radio commercials and a trailer.
The sequel to the 1984 film Cop au Vin, Inspecteur Lavardin finds the detective (Jean Poiret) demoted to investigations in a small coastal town due to his investigation techniques involving dunking suspect’s heads under water. This brings him into the case of a murdered Catholic writer named Raoul Mons, who has been found dead on the beach with the word pig written all over his back.
It turns out that Raoul wasn’t just a drug dealer, blackmailer and rapist, but also was married to Helene, an old flame that Lavardin hasn’t seen for twenty years. Even stranger, her daughter is named Véronique, the same name he’d always wanted to give to a daughter. And when the truth comes out, will the Inspector stay with his new family or just go home alone with his breakfast obsessions and the photo of a murderess in his wallet?
Two years later, Poiret would return to this role for four episodes of the TV series Les dossiers secrets de l’inspecteur Lavardin, which was written by Chabrol, had two episodes directed by him and also featured his son Thomas.
Arrow Video’s Lies And Deceit: Five Films By Claude Chabrol collected five high definitions (1080p) blu ray versions of Cop Au Vin and Inspector Lavardin to Madame Bovary, Betty and Torment. Each movie has an introduction by film scholar Joël Magny and select scene commentaries by Chabrol. Additionally, there’s an 80-page collector’s booklet of new writing by film critics Martyn Conterio, Kat Ellinger, Philip Kemp and Sam Wigley, trailers and image galleries for each movie and limited edition packaging with newly commissioned artwork by Tony Stella.
Cop Au Vinhas new commentary by critic Ben Sachs and Why Chabrol?, a new interview with film critic Sam Wigley on why Chabrol remains essential viewing
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