Tag Archives: 1989

CALULDRON FILMS BOX SET RELEASE: Brivido Giallo

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The Brivido Giallo Collection collects the four film series directed by Lamberto Bava. Each film in this set is a standalone fully featured production that was completed between 1987 – 1989. The films stories are not connected, but were collected together for Italian television near the end of the 80s. 

Cauldron Films is collecting all four movies — Until Death, Graveyard Disturbance, Dinner with a Vampire, and The Ogre — on blu ray for the first time in a limited edition five disc set with each movie fully uncut and restored from 4K scans of the 35mm film negatives, loaded with brand new cast and crew featurettes by Eugenio Ercolani (including 4 with Lamberto Bava himself) and an exclusive new interview with composer Simon Boswell, all housed in a rigid outer box with four folded posters featuring new artwork by Eric Adrian Lee.

You can get this set from Cauldron Films and Diabolik DVD.

Here’s an overview of what’s in the set:

Graveyard Disturbance (1987): I used to have a complicated relationship with Lamberto Bava. And by that, I mean that for every Demons, there’s a Devilfish. But then I realize that I kind of like Blastfighter, love Macabre and even kind of dig Delirium. I always giae him another chance and finally, one day, I came around to liking what Lamberto directed.

In July of 1986, Lamberto was hired to create five TV movies under the title Brivido Giallo (Yellow Thrill). Of course, none of these were giallo and only four got made: Until Death, The Ogre, Dinner with a Vampire and this film.

Originally titled Dentro il cimitero (Inside the Cemetery), this spoof of Italian horror is about five twentysomething teenagers who make a bet with an entire town — which is literally referred to as the kind of place from An American Werewolf In London — to see if they can survive one evening inside a series of catacombs. Not only are there zombies and vampires in there, there’s also death itself.

It all starts off with plenty of promise, as our gang of young punks has the most 80s van ever, complete with an image from Heavy Metal, U2 and Madonna. After the crew shoplifts, they go on the run and straight into supernatural trouble.

The person they’re stealing from? Lamberto. Which is only fair, as he uses this movie to rip off everything from — sorry, spoof or pay homage to — Carnival of Souls and Phenomena to his father’s Black Sunday and any number of zombie movies.

So where does the eating come in? Well, there’s one great scene in here where an entire family of multiple eyed creatures all dine on rotten food. This moment had to have inspired Pan’s Labyrinth.

The Cauldron release of Graveyard Disturbance includes commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Nanni Cobretti; interviews with Bava, Gianlorenzo Battaglia, Karl Zinny, Massimo Antonello Geleng and Roberto Ricci; a trailer; a poster with artwork by Eric Adrian Lee and a reverse blu ray wrap with the original artwork.

Until Death (1988): As I mentioned above, I felt like I had never given Lamberto a fair chance. Then again, whenever I say that, people always remark that I’m always mentioning that I like his movies. Demons is a near-perfect movie but I’ve always qualified that by saying that he had Argento, Franco Ferrin and Dardano Sacchetti on board along with Michele Soavi as assistant director. And then I think, well, you know, I kind of really like Macabre and it has some really grimy stuff in it. A Blade In the Dark, Blastfighter, Dinner with a Vampire, Graveyard Disturbance, The Ogre, Demons 2 and Midnight Ripper all have charms. I’ve even come around to liking Delirium e foto di Gioia, Maybe not Monster Shark. But the more I think about it, I really do like Lamberto Bava.

This is the movie that put me over the edge into perhaps even love.

In July of 1986, Lamberto was hired to create five TV movies under the title Brivido Giallo (Yellow Thrill). Of course, none of these were giallo and only four got made: The Ogre, Dinner with a Vampire, Graveyard Disturbance and Until Death.

There were some hurt feelings about this movie when it was made. It was based on an older script by Dardano Sacchetti, but Lucio Fulci went on record saying that he was planning on making an adaption of The Postman Always Rings Twice with the title Evil Comes Back. Fulci said that Sacchetti wrote it up and sent it to several producers and later found out that when Luciano Martino bought it, his name wasn’t on it. Fulci said, “…because of our friendship I decided not to sue Sacchetti, but I did break off all relations with him.” Sacchetti responded, “The producer of Evil Comes Back didn’t have the budget required, and he gave up to do the film. That’s it. Years later, as the screenplay was mine, I sold it to another producer who used it for a b-movie with Lamberto Bava.”

Gioia Scola really could have been a remembered giallo queen if she’d come along 15 years early. As it is, she was in some of my favorite late 80s films in the genre, including Obsession: A Taste for Fear, Too Beautiful to Die, Suggestionata and Evil Senses.

In this film, she plays Linda, a woman whose husband Luca (Roberto Pedicini) left her eight years ago. All the men of the small village wondered why he’d leave behind such a stunning woman. In fact, this movie could have been called Ogni uomo vuole scopare Linda. She gave birth to Luca’s son and unknown to the town, has since become the wife of the man who helped kill her husband, Carlo (David Brandon).

Together, they run a small hotel near the lake. During one rainy night, Marco (Urbano Barberini) arrives to stay. And it seems like he knows way too much about what’s going on. Her son Alex (Marco Vivio) may as well, as he wakes up every night screaming, dreaming of his father clawing his way out of a muddy grave. She hires Marco as the handyman, but Carlo thinks they’re sleeping together. In no way can this turn out well.

How does Marco know where all the old clothes are kept? How does he already know the family recipes? And why is he so close so quickly with Alex?

What’s intriguing is how close this is in story and tone, yet goes off on its own path, to Bava’s father’s film Shock. The difference is where the father would use camera tricks and tone to create a mood of dread, his son will put you directly into the middle of the muck and grue with comic book lighting and great looking effects from Angelo Mattei. And keeping the family tradition going, Lamberto’s son Fabrizio was the assistant director. How wild that Mario’s grandson was AD on movies like Zoolander 2 and Argento’s Giallo and The Card Player, using the name Roy Bava for those last two movies.

My favorite fact about this movie is that it was released on VHS as The Changeling 2: The Revenge. Trust me, it has nothing to do with The Changeling.

The Cauldron release of Until Death includes commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth; interviews with Bava, Battaglia, David Brandon and Massimo Antonello Geleng; a trailer; a poster with artwork by Eric Adrian Lee and a reverse blu ray wrap with the original artwork.

The Ogre (1989): Following the success of the film Demons and Demons 2, this film was announced as part of Bava’s TV movie series. The script, written by Dardano Sacchetti, is pretty much the original script for The House By the Cemetery before Lucio Fulci added to the tale. Seeing as how it was a TV movie, there was some self-censorship, as Bava said that were this a real movie, the ogre would have eaten children.

Cheryl (Virginia Bryant, Demons 2, The Barbarians) is a sexually confused American writer of horror novels who traves to Italy with her husband Tom (Paolo Malco, The New York Ripper, Thunder) and son Bobby — yep, little Bob, but not Giovanni Frezza — to work on her next book.

She begins to have nightmares of childhood memories of being stalked by an ogre and becomes convinced that the house has a curse on it that is bringing her past memories into our reality.

Alex Serra, who was the blind man from the original Demons, also shows up. Speaking of Demons, this movie was released outside of Italy as the third film in that series. As you’ll soon learn from the Demoni sequels, it has nothing to do with the first two films. Even more confusing, this was released on DVD in Germany as Ghosthouse II, the sequel to the Umberto Lenzi’s Ghosthouse/La Casa 3. That movie is confusing, too, as it’s the third movie in the La Casa series, which translates to house in Italian, but has nothing to do with the movie House. Instead, Evil Dead is known as La Casa in Italy.

Want more info on how all that works? Check this article out on La Casa and this article about the Demons movies.

The Cauldron release of The Ogre includes commentary by Rachel Nisbet; interviews with Bava, Geleng and Ricci; a trailer; a poster with artwork by Eric Adrian Lee and a reverse blu ray wrap with the original artwork.

Dinner With a Vampire (1989): Four actors — Gianni (Riccardo Rossi, the Italian voice of Simba in The Lion King), Rita (Patrizia Pellegrino), Monica (Yvonne Sciò, who was in the Tal Bachman video for “She’s So High”) and Sasha (Valeria Milillo) have won their audition to appear in a new horror movie. As they’re on the way to meet Jurek the director (George Hilton, All the Colors of the Dark, The Case of the Bloody Iris) — who lives in a large castle — they learn that he’s a vampire and has a challenge: he believes that they can kill him.

There are movies within a movie. There’s a hunchbacked assistant named Giles (Daniele Aldrovandi). And there’s lots of gore, particularly at the end. Written by Bava with Dardano Sacchetti, this comedy isn’t going to change your world, but it will entertain you unless you have a major issue with goofy humor.

The Cauldron release of Dinner With a Vampire includes commentary by Eugenio Ercolani, Nathaniel Thompson and Troy Howarth; interviews with Bava, George Hilton, Geleng and Boswell; a trailer; a poster with artwork by Eric Adrian Lee and a reverse blu ray wrap with the original artwork.

The set also comes with a soundtrack compilation CD featuring tracks from each Brivido Giallo film curated and supplied by composer Simon Boswell.

This is an incredibly exciting set! Here’s to more Italian TV movies making their way here.

SEVERIN BLACK FRIDAY: The Mask of Satan (1989)

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From writer/director Lamberto Bava comes a modern-day reimagining of his father’s classic Black Sunday! also known as Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil, this is scanned in 2K from the original camera negative for the first time ever in North America and has an interview with Bava.

The sale will take place from 12:01am EST on 11/29 to 11:59pm PST on 12/2 at Severin’s site.

A group of skiers on the Swiss Alps fall into a chasm opened during an avalanche, which kills one of them named Bebo, played by Michele Soavi, who can’t seem to get away from any movies in the Demons series. Soon, they find a metal mask — whoops, this happens so often in Demons movies — and discover a body buried between the ice. Digging around, it causes them to get buried deeper in the snow, so deep that they discover an underground city where a witch was executed. And that witch? Well, she decides that this group of skiers would make the perfect instruments of her revenge.

Lamberto decided that if he was going to make another movie in the Demons saga, why not also remake his father’s Black Sunday while he was at it?

That movie was filmed because the elder Bava was a big fan of Nikolay Gogol’s short story Viy, often reading it to his children. When he was allowed to choose the storyline for a movie he wanted to direct, he chose Gogol’s story, which also inspired the 1967 Russian film.

Davide is the de facto leader of this group and his girlfriend Sabina (Debora Caprioglio, using the last name of her fiancee Klaus Kinski here) breaks her leg and it’s instantly healed. Is it any wonder that she’s soon possessed by the dead witch Anibas, who has the same name as her only reversed? What kind of coincidence is that?

There’s also a blind priest that everyone adores making fun, which makes you wish for the entire cast to be killed. Well, you get what you want, trust me. Mary Sellers from Stagefright is in this, as is Eva Grimaldi from Ratman as the demonic form of Anibas.

Man, what a demonic form it is. After she begins seducing our hero, her young breasts instantly transform into withered old tears and her feet and hands are replaced with chicken claws while she spits white fluid all over him. Oh yeah — she also has the facial scars that Barbara Steele wore in Mario’s version.

This is a hard movie to review, as you have to compare it one of the greatest movies ever made. Even Lamberto, I think, would admit that his father remains the best director. But his son tries, he really does. And this film is pretty entertaining. But Black Sunday is the kind of film that’s going to live forever. Lamberto was able to create some fun visuals and effects here, plenty of gore and some great music from Simon Boswell and gooey effects from Sergio Stivaletti, who directed The Wax Mask and did the effects for Demons, Hands of Steel, Demons 2, The Church, The Sect and Cemetery Man.

It even has the same title as Black Sunday in Italy: La Maschera del Demonio. There’s also plenty of nudity and a scene where the witch’s tongue comes so far out of her mouth that she starts choking Davide and he’s like, well, alright, I guess I’ll have sex with her now.

It’s entertaining, as all Italian late in the game horror is to me. And that’s enough to recommend it to you.

UNSUNG HORRORS HORROR GIVES BACK 2024: Nightmare In Venice (1989)

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Each October, the Unsung Horrors podcast does a month of themed movies. This year they will once again be setting up a fundraiser to benefit Best Friends, which is working to save the lives of cats and dogs all across America, giving pets second chances and happy homes.

Today’s theme: 1980s

Ad un passo dall’aurora (One Step Away from Dawn) is based on the book Traumnovelle by Arthur Schnitzler and is about a rich surgeon, married to a beautiful woman, who seeks new and more erotic experiences outside of his marriage and wait, this is the same story as Eyes Wide Shut, except instead of Stanley Kubrick directing, it has Mark B. Light. Of course, that’s Mario Bianchi, the man who helmed Kill the Poker Player, the “Lucio Fulci Presents” films Sodoma’s Ghost and The Murder Secret and Satan’s Baby Doll, After this movie, he’d spend most of the next decade making adult films as Nicholas Moore, Tony Yanker and Martin White, including the scenes that would make up the 2001 compilation movie John Holmes vs. Ilona Staller.

That said, even though so much of Bianchi’s career was in actual dirty movies and this is a movie about sex, this is somewhat chaste. I mean, yes, it has a female masturbation scene, but the orgy that is at the center of the story feels like a sex party from a TV movie.

Riccardo Varchi (Gerardo Amato) is a cardiologist who becomes obsessed with a sex worker named Lù (Tinì Cansino, who I am as well already obsessed over as she was Arabella: Black Angel) and attends the aforementioned orgy, where he’s soon blackmailed.

This is not the only Italian film inspired by the same story. 1982’s Il cavaliere, la morte e il diavolo (The Knight, Death and the Devil), directed by Beppe Cino (La Casa del Buon Ritorno), is also an adaption and adds a punk girl to the tale.

I love that Stanley Kubrick probably watched this to get ready to make his movie. He probably did more takes of one scene that Bianchi did in this entire movie.

CANNON MONTH 3: The Freeway Maniac (1989)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For the last two days of Cannon Month, I’m going to cover movies that weren’t produced by Cannon but which were distributed by them on one of their various home video labels including Cannon / MGM/UA Home Video, HBO/Cannon Video, Cannon Video, Cannon / Guild Home Video, Cannon / Rank Video, Cannon Screen Entertainment Limited, Cannon Classics, Cannon / Warner Home Video, Cannon/VMP, Cannon Screen Entertainment, Scotia/Cannon, Cannon International, Cannon/ ECV, Cannon / Showtime, Cannon / United Film, Cannon / Isabod, Cannon / Mayco and so many more.

There’s no way that the Gahan Wilson that wrote this movie is the Gahan Wilson who drew all those cartoons for Playboy, right?

Because if he is, then this is a comedy and this movie makes a lot more sense.

And if not, then I have no idea what the filmmakers were going for in this one.

So after this movie completely rips off the open of Pieces and Nightmare, we move to an asylum where the inmates are being given cigarettes as some form of therapy. One of them escapes and kills everyone in his way and that’s Arthur (James Jude Courtney, who would go on to be The Shape in the 2018 Halloween). He nearly kills an actress named Linda (Loren Winters, who was a one and done actress in this, along with producing the film), whose experience ends up getting her cast in a cheesy science fiction movie called Astronette that will use her notoriety for publicity.

There’s no way Arthur would hunt her down, right?

I have so many questions for this movie. How did they get Robbie Krieger from The Doors to write the theme song? Why did they have Linda’s boyfriend cheat on her and suddenly become a sympathetic hero in the last act? Why is there no real freeway in this movie? Why does Arthur howl at the moon? Why is some of this movie well-shot with decent stunts and other portions have the worst acting you’ve ever seen? Are you surprised that this was released by Cannon — well, released on VHS in the Netherlands by Cannon Screen Entertainment, so not really produced by Cannon.

There’s not really another slasher like The Freeway Maniac. It’s…something else.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: In the Line of Duty 4 (1989)

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Captain Donnie Yan (Donnie Yen) and Madam Rachel Yeung Lai-ching (Cynthia Khan) are on the trail of cocaine dealers. When she goes off script and gets found by a dockworker named Luk Wan-ting (Yuen Yat-chor) who thinks that she’s an illegal immigrant. He feels bad for her and gives her money and a place to say. As Donnie stays after the criminals, she learns that Luk’s brother Ming (Liu Kai-chi) is being  attacked by criminals that he owes money to. The two fight off the gang and when her cover’s blown, Rachel gets back on the case. At the same time, their partner Peter Woods gets shotgun blasted by the real boss behind all of the drug deals is a CIA officer named Mr. Robinson.

I’ve just explained about the first ten minutes or so of this dense film, one that builds tension and then goes as wild as any of the other movies in this series.

Luk Wan-Ting is a witness to that murder and gets framed for it. He escapes the police and a killer, which sends our heroes after him. She thinks he’s innocent based on their past history and he thinks that he’s not, so we have some tension between our supercops. In fact, things get even tenser when they start to wonder which cops they can trust and decide to hide out with Luk and attempt to get him to testify.

The final fights in this film — once the plot is solved and we can, as they say, get to the fireworks factory — are incredible. The battle between the CIA agent (Michael Woods) and Yen on top of a building has more action than every movie that will come out of Hollywood this year. There’s also a great battle between Khan and karate champion Farlie Ruth Kordica that has the two falling from huge heights and kicking each other repeatedly. Also: if you like glass being broken — I do — this movie will give you all the shattering and smashing of glass that you can handle.

Director Yuen Woo-ping is a name you should already know but if you don’t, he’s the director of Drunken Master, Tiger Cage, Iron Monkey and so many more movies. He also was the fight choreographer of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Fist of Legend, Black Mask, the second and third Matrix and Kill Bill 1 and 2. Seeing his name means that you’re about to have your mind absolutely blown.

88 Films’ reissue of In the Line of Duty 4 has the option of watching the movie in Cantonese and two different English dubs, as well as extras like a commentary by F.J. DeSanto, an interview with Donnie Yen and trailers. There’s also a gorgeous book and posters for each movie. You can buy the set from MVD.

CBS LATE MOVIE MONTH: The Lady and the Highwayman (1989)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Lady and the Highwayman was on the CBS Late Movie on April 27, 1990.

Barbara Cartland’s romance novel Cupid Rides Pillion was filmed as this British TV movie, one of the first appearances by Hugh Grant, who appears alongside a pretty solid cast that includes Oliver Reed (once a werewolf, once a diver out of a mansion window in Burnt Offerings), Claire Bloom (Clash of the Titans), Michael York (who I associate with this type of movie most often, as he was in The Three Musketeers), Emma Samms (Dynasty), Sir John Mills (Quatermass in the 1979 TV movie) and Liz Fraser (who was in many of the Carry On movies) among others.

It’s yet another time I watch a movie and am amazed that it’s a John Hough movie. The guy has such a vast resume — everything from Twins of Evil and The Legend of Hell House in the late 60’s horror genre to great 70’s fare like Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry and the two Witch Mountain movies and then some out there 80’s stuff like The Watcher in the Woods, American Gothic, Biggles and Howling IV: The Original Nightmare.

Emma Samms’ character of Lady Castlemaine is based on the life of Barbara Palmer, First Duchess of Cleveland, one of King Charles II’s mistresses and the mother of several of his children, in case you’re into British scandals.

This is the story of Lord Lucius Vyne (Grant), who is loyal to King Charles II and helping help to return to rule after Cromwell. He takes on a secret identity as the Silver Blade, kind of like a musketeer of sorts. He’s too late to save Lady Panthea Vyne’s (Lysette Anthony, Krull) King Charles Spaniel from being stomped to death, so fair warning if you like small dogs.

Even when the king comes back, he has enemies, so the Silver Blade remains in his service, even when it nearly costs him and his lady love’s life.

You can watch this on Tubi and trust me, the print is just as horrible. I think with a British TV movie from the late 80’s, this is as good as we’re going to get.

Junesploitation: L’uomo che non voleva morire (1989)

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June 26: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Free Space! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

This is the only episode of Alta tensione that I haven’t seen — until now. The other episodes are Il gioko, a story of a teacher thinking her students murdered the instructor she has replaced, the giallo Testimone oculare and Il maestro del terrore, in which a horror director is attacked by a writer and an actor. All were directed by Lamberto Bava.

Translated as The Man Who Wouldn’t Die, this originally going to air in 1989. Due to concerns about the violence of these films, it didn’t play on Italian TV again until 2007. The other three aired in 1999. None of them have been released on home media legally.

Written by Gianfranco Clerici (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room) based on a short story by Giorgio Scerbanenco, this is about a gang of five burglars that art dealer Madame Janaud (Martine Brochard, Murder Obsession) hires to steal art from a rich man’s villa. Led by Fabrizio (Keith Van Hoven, Demons 3), the thieves (including Lino Salemme, who did coke out of a Coke can in Demons and Stefano Molinari, the demon in the movie on the TV in Demons 2) tie up the man of the house and his wife, then take everything they can get their hands on so that Janaud can sell them to art collector Mr. Miraz (Jacques Sernas).

The problem is that one of the gang, Giannetto (Gino Concari) screws over the gang and cuts up the most expensive thing they take, Renoir’s “After the Bath.” He hides in the villa’s garage and decides to go back for it later.

That would be bad enough, but Giannetto attacks the husband and then assaults his tied-up wife while the man watches. He gets enraged and kicks the offensive moron in the head and kills him. Fabrizio kills both the husband and wife, then wraps the body of Giannetto in a carpet. The gang argues what to do, so instead of killing him, they strip him and dump him in the woods. Somehow, he survives and comes back to life in the hospital. He wants revenge, but he’ll be lucky to stay alive, as a giallo killer starts to murder all of the gang, with one’s face getting smashed, another being done in by toilet — head smashing and drowning — and a smooshed head for the last crook.

This was originally to be made by Lamberto’s father Mario, who had been working on a script with Rafael Azcona and Alessandro Parenzo. It’s not Lamberto’s best work but the kills are very well filmed and the Simon Boswell score is good.

You can watch this on Daily Motion.

Junesploitation: Il maestro del terrore (1989)

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June 19: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 80s Horror! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

I’ve made a real 180 on Lamberto Bava. Maybe it’s because the first of his movies that I watched was Devilfish. I should have really started with Macabre, A Blade In the Dark or any of his TV movies and then I’d feel a lot different. And years ago, I unfairly compared him with his father instead of allowing him to be judged on his own merit.

I am sorry, John Old Jr.

The Prince of Terror has never been released in the U.S. on VHS, DVD or blu ray. That’s a shame.

It pulls the Body Double fake out as soon as it starts, as you get the jump scare of a woman — Magda (Marina Viro) — escaping an RV only to see her boyfriend drown in a swamp and become an inflated zombie and begin stalking her through a swamp.

This isn’t happening.

Instead, it’s the set of director Vincent Omen’s (Tomas Arana, The Church) latest movie. He hates the script from his longtime writer Paul Hilary (David Brandon, who was the director in Stage Fright so dumb that he let his cast stay in the theater where a killing machine was hiding), so he gets him fired before heading out to play golf. While he’s hitting the front 9, he’s interviewed by a reporter (Virginia Bryant, The Barbarians) who asks him about the rumors that he’s much older than 37 and his public perception as the “Prince of Darkness.”

He holds up one of his golf balls, which has 666 on it. Obviously, he’s into this personna.

After he finishes playing, he goes home to his wife Betty (Carole Andre, Yor Hunter from the Future), daughter Susan (Joyce Pitti) and dog Demon. Yes, he is definitely into this demonic side. That evening, he and his lovely spouse are supposed to join his producer (Pascal Druant) and Magda for dinner. And then, golf balls explode into their home, sinister phone calls start and end only when the phone lines are severed and their cute little dog is killed — by having his fur removed and then he’s just thrown in the garbage — because this is an Italian movie. Then, a bald killer with a huge knife (Ulisse Miniverni) appears.

By the end of the movie, Omen gets shot, his wife gets her leg ensnared in a bear trap and his daughter gets buried alive in the basement. Plus, the toilet flushes blood and the security guard is replaced with a robot. It’s an all over the place plan from Paul the writer and actor Eddie Felson– the bald monster — who both want to get back at Vincent.

Special effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti got a workout here, as when Vincent gets his revenge, he starts attacking people with golf balls, including one that blows up a man’s wrist and another that goes Fulci and blows up an eyeball. There’s also a good Simon Boswell score.

I wonder how much of this story was writer Dardano Sacchetti getting his scripting revenge on former friend and co-creator Lucio Fulci. That scene where he’s accused of stealing ideas and it becomes obvious that Omen has no ideas of his own, as well as a bloody script emerging from a toilet, seem to lead one to feel that way. It’s fun in a TV movie way — I love this era of Italian TV movie horror — but it certainly doesn’t aspire to the heights that Fulci reached.

This is part of a series of movies that aired on Italian TV as Alta tensione. The other episodes are L’uomo che non voleva morire, in which a man is near death in a hospital and trying to recall how he got there; Il gioko, a story of a teacher thinking her students murdered the instructor she has replaced and the giallo Testimone oculare. All were directed by Lamberto Bava.

I hope that American boutique labels follow the lead of Cauldron Films and release movies like this and the House of series that they just put out instead of just releasing the same movies in new formats. There is so much out there!

You can watch this on YouTube.

88 FILMS BLU RAY RELEASE: The Inspector Wears Skirts 2 (1989)

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After the Police Academy with stunts awesomeness of the first movie, this has four new squad members join the Hong Kong Police Academy to be join the Banshee Squad led by Madam Wu (Sibelle Hu). However, many of them don’t get along with the existing team, like Susanna (Amy Yip), who is so well-endowed that she has to cut holes in the chest of her bulletproof vest. There’s also the male team, the Tiger Squad, who are led by Inspector Kan (Stanley Fung). Just like the original, Wu and Kan have a thin line between love and hate in their relationship.

That said, this time there’s competition for Madam Wu’s affection, as there’s a new antiterrorist trainer, Mr. Lu (Melvin Wong). The majority of this movie is all training until with twenty minutes left, it remembers that they need to bring the Banshee Squad and Tiger Squad back together and have all the good girls and guys stop fighting with one another.

There’s more dancing than fighting in this, more pranks and hijinks than fisticuffs. And you know, I don’t care. I love these movies, with their 80s fashion looks, lovable characters and blasts of action from producer Jackie Chan’s Jackie Chan Stunt Team. There are four of these movies and I will watch every single one of them with a huge grin.

So yeah, nothing happens, but when the first movie was such a success, they rushed this one. Just enjoy it for what it is and that we can watch movies like this in high definition now and not 20th generation VHS tapes that we bought at a convention that tape rot in months.

The 88 Films blu ray release of this movie has a 2K remaster from the original negatives and extras including a new commentary by Frank Djeng, interviews with director Wellson Chin and stuntmen Go Shut Fung and Mars, a trailer, stills gallery and a reversible cover with new artwork by Sean Longmore and the original poster art. You can get it from MVD.

VISUAL VENGEANCE ON TUBI: Beyond Dreams Door (1989)

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EDITOR’S NOTE: Did you know that Visual Vengeance has a ton of movies on Tubi? It’s true. Check out this Letterboxd list and look for reviews as new movies get added. You can find this movie on Tubi.

I don’t want to jinx it, but every time I think that I am running out of movies that blow my mind with how unhinged they are, I discover something new. Usually, those grubby film highs come from Italy or Turkey or from the early 70’s, but man, Beyond Dreams Door was made at the end of the 80’s and comes from Ohio of all places.

Made with the cinema school at The Ohio State University, this is a film all about Ben, who stopped dreaming once his parents died when he was 9. Now, the dreams are coming for him, a fact he learns from the dream version of himself who warns:

“Beyond dream’s door is where horror lies,
Where love may sleep with sorrow’d eyes,
Where demons wait to greet the ones,
Who dare not reach its darkened shores,
Beyond dream’s door tomorrow dies.*”

As low as the budget for this film may be, its concept is high. Somehow, this also looks like anything but a movie made for thousands of dollars. It’s slick as hell and certainly doesn’t seem like director Jay Woelfel’s first movie. In fact, I saw Art of the Dead a few years back and recognized that he edited it. I’m glad he’s still working, whether that means composing music, writing films and even acting.

Imagine a movie as hard to explain as Phantasm with — amazingly — less of a budget. That’s what you’ve got here. And it’s exactly as great as you’d hope.

*Thanks to the astounding Bleeding Skull for writing that poem out.