Alley Oates (Deborah Rose) and detective Jersey Callum (Ed Nelson) and Gordon Mullin (James Eustermann are trying to find the killer in a horrifying child murder case when a tip leads them to the mortuary of the prime suspect, Chen (Robert Yun Ju Ahn). They find three mummified corpses that he claims are demons called kyoshi that can only be sated with the taste of human flesh, something he’s been feeding them as part of his mortician career. Once he’s arrested, the demons start looking for their own food, locking everyone inside the mortuary and possessing the coroner’s secretary, Mrs. Poopinplatz (Phyllis Diller), as well as her poodle Floofsoms — played by Binnie, who was also in The Man With Two Brains, Ruthless People and most famously appeared as Gonk in Elvira: Mistress of the Dark — transforming her and it into the creatures that you remember from the VHS box art.
Also: Norman Fell with a ponytail, conducting an autopsy on a suicide case named Dana (Denise Young) who suddenly wakes up screaming. If that’s not crazy enough, Fell was the third choice for the role behind Alice Cooper and Warren Zevon.
Directed and written by James Cummins, who took his special effects skills and added in make-up effects from Bill Corso to go wild. Cummins did the effects on Houseand this aims to outdo that one. This is an unconventional film, one in which the heroine has to overcome the trauma of losing her child and having ovarian cancer, all while not being the typical expective young female lead.
I’ve stared at the box art for this movie for years and somehow never watched it. I’m glad that I finally did, as while the start of the story is a slow burn, it eventually remembers that it’s a VHS rental movie, a popcorn horror film that should do all it can to make you laugh and scream out loud.
Jack and Janet Smurl of West Pittston, PA say that a demon was in their house for nearly 15 years between 1974 and 1989, despite the denials of the Catholic Church, psychologists and scientific skeptics. Luckily, they had Ed and Lorraine Warren on their side, who encouraged their beliefs and even helped them write the book that this movie was based on.
Sally Kirkland was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her work in this movie as Janet Smurl. Jack is played by Jeffrey DeMunn, who you may know as Dale from TV’s The Walking Dead. Or if you’re like Becca and never watched that show, you’ll know him as the sheriff from the remake of The Blob.
Louise Latham from Marnie plays the grandmother and George D. Wallace — Commander Cody himself! — is the grandfather, who doesn’t believe any of this is happening but has a great part where he fends off the media on the porch with a rifle.
Joyce Van Patten — the domineering mom from Monkey Shines — shows up as a neighbor, with Stephen Markle and Diane Baker playing the Warrens, way before The Conjuring series of films (I kind of Lorraine also appeared on Road Rules: All-Stars before Hollywood truly came calling). Keep an eye out for the reporter who collapses on the Smurl’s front lawn — that’s Lorraine Warren.
The best part of this movie? The crazy way it visualizes the demonic presence as a black formless bit of nothing that has multiple voices. The funniest? There are numerous moments, but I kind of love that copyright issues meant that when the kids watch Lost In Space, they dubbed over the actor’s voices.
The Chattanooga Film Festival is happening now through June 29. To get your in-person or virtual badge to see any of these movies, click here. For more information, visit chattfilmfest.org and follow us on Facebook,Twitterand Instagram.
James Glickenhaus — Suicide Cult, The Exterminator, The Soldier, The Protector — brings us this story of Bobby McBain, a soldier who brings together his old buddies to battle a Colombian dictator.
Christopher Walken plays McBain, which has nothing to do with The Simpsons except that this movie and that show got into legal wrangling which led to the cartoon calling McBain by his real name, Rainier Wolfcastle.
Besides a role for a young Luis Guzmán and an appearance by MTV VJ Karen “Duff” Duffy in a crack den, this movie also has Michael Ironsides, Steve James from The Delta Forceand American Ninja (amongst so many other incredible movies) and María Conchita Alonso. It’s kind of mindblowing to see a star the level of Walken in a movie with Ironsides and James. It kind of also makes me deliriously happy.
Santos (Chick Vennera) attempts to lead a people’s revolt in Colombia, but he fails and is executed. The people’s revolution won’t stop, so his sister Christina (María Conchita Alonso) travels the whole way to New York to find McBain (Christopher Walken). Once, back in Nam, her brother rescued McBain. Now, she wants him to get her some revenge. How do you do that? Well, get together some old war buddies, kill some drug dealers, take their cash and then kill the President of Columbia (Victor Argo).
Originally titled McBain’s War and McBain’s Seven, you can dazzle your friends by telling that everything in Colombia is actually the Phillippines.
McBain is now available on blu ray from Synapse. It comes with audio commentary from director James Glickenhaus and film historian Chris Poggiali, the original theatrical trailer and an all-new remixed 5.1 surround sound created specifically for this release. The original 2.0 theatrical stereo mix is also included. You can get it from MVD.
June 18: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 90s comedy! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
I never saw Drop Dead Fred — I was 19 when it came out and despite my love of The Young Ones and everything Rik Mayall ever did, I somehow just never made time for it — when I was a kid, but man, this is one of those movies that’s at once perfect for children and also so anarchic and wild that their parents may never want to show it to them.
It also comes from a very, very dark place.
While originally intended for Tim Burton to direct and Robin Williams to play Drop Dead Fred, it ended up with Dutch director Ate de Jong and Mayall being involved. Yes, the director of Highway to Hell and the man known for abusing Adrian Edmondson on both The Young Ones and Bottom were selected to make a movie for children.
In 2021, The Telegraph published “Rik Mayall’s mental health misadventure: how Drop Dead Fred repelled America,” de Jong revealed that as he rewrote the script, he based much of it on his own life, saying “…the trauma of child abuse goes deep and its claws reach far in time. It was not something ever spoken about on the set, not with Rik or anyone, but for me it existed.”
This is the same movie that Rotten Tomatoes summarized as “Tackling mature themes with an infantile sensibility, Drop Dead Fred is an ill-conceived family comedy that is more likely to stir up a headache than the imagination.”
Gene Siskel said, “This is easily one of the worst films I’ve ever seen.”
Hmm. Maybe I saw a different cut.
Drop Dead Fred feels different in a world that understands childhood abuse and the ways that we cope with it. Elizabeth Cronin (Phoebe Cates, who the movie tries to make look like a woman who has never grown up and who is dowdy, but come on, it’s Phoebe Cates) grew up with a mother (Marsha Mason, absolutely perfect in this movie) who repeatedly emotionally abused her to the point that she found happiness with an imaginary friend named Drop Dead Fred (Mayall). After she caused too much chaos with Fred, her father forced her to symbolically — but totally not — duct tape Fred into a box and put him away forever.
This scene is also based in horrifying childhood memories. A friend of co-writer/executive producer Carlos Davis named Steve Burnette told the story that his mother had an imaginary friend as a girl which upset her mother so much that she demanded that she flush it down the toilet and kill it. This traumatized her for years.
When Elizabeth grows up, she remains the same unassertive and frightened little girl, just accepting her husband (Tim Matheson) leaving her for another woman (Bridget Fonda in an uncredited part), losing her job, getting her car stolen and having to move back home with her oppressive mother. Despite help from her friend Janie (Carrie Fisher), Elizabeth remains trapped, a victim of past abuse.
Then she unleashes Fred by opening the box and in a fit of pique, he responds to her growing up by smearing dog crap all over the carpet.
Drop Dead Fred has come back because his whole job is to figure out how to make Elizabeth — Snot Face, as. he calls her — happy again. But can she be happy? Her father abandoned her to a mother who, at best, used words to make her never feel like she was right or if she mattered. And then, when she tries to assert herself, her mother places all the blame on her, saying that she’s too emotional or being silly. Of course you’d invent — or be open to — an imaginary friend.
Seriously: I had an imaginary friend — in the form of a doll — named Freddy when I was 3 years old, a character well-known enough to my parents that my father made a book called Freddy Did It that recounted stories of where I broke things around the house for attention and blamed the doll.
At the end of all this, after enduring so much real life and even having her mother infantilize her by bringing her to a child psychologist to get pills that will make Fred go away, Elizabeth instead goes into a dream universe where she learns just how important that she is and that at least one person, Fred, truly loves her, values her and views her happiness as valid. She has learned from his dream world everything she needs.
The film originally ended with Elizabeth at Mickey’s house. After she reads his daughter Natalie a bedtime story, the little girl comes downstairs with her teddy bear torn apart and says that Drop Dead Fred did it. There’s a shot of a book with Fred in it and you hear his voice. Audiences hated this and wanted him brought back. The ending is so poignant and perfect to me, as Natalie now needs Fred. Elizabeth knows this and knows she can no longer see her best friend but now, someone who will be very important to her has needs just like she did. But unlike everyone else, she can believe in this little girl and support her and give her what she never did.
How dumb am I for ending this movie crying for ten minutes after it was over?
This is a movie for children where the main character and her childhood dream friend discuss eating her mother and pooping her all over the dining room table and here I am just overcome with emotion.
I have no idea why this movie was so hated when it came out and why no one isn’t talking more about it today. I also have no idea why I waited so long to see it, but it was exactly what I needed today.
There are six Karate Warrior movies and for me, that’s about ten too few as I could watch these all day every day. This time, Anthony Scott has left Miami and given his golden gi to a martial arts school that his friend Greg (Timothy Smith) runs. That’s where the new Karate Warrior comes to learn, a man known as Larry Jones (Ron Williams, who was in Beyond the Door III). He’s in love with a girl named Betty, but as a poor kid, her father wants him to stay out of the picture. He pays him off — well, he helps his mother financially — if he leaves his daughter alone.
The bad guy this time is Joe Carson (Christopher Alan, who played the evil Dick Anderson in the last film), a bully who beats up Greg and sets him up for a hit and run before he steals the golden gi. Larry smashes Joe’s boom box and soon finds a sensei of his own, Mr. Masura (Richard Goon), to learn how to fight back. A friend of Kimura, he teaches Joe the The Dragon Strike, which is different than Anthony’s Stroke of the Dragon as it’s a ridge hand strike — done with the thumb side of the hand — instead of an open palm shotei.
Maybe if our new Karate Warrior wins the big match against Joe, he can keep the house that his alcoholic mother (Lauren Russel) is losing, keep his sister Julie (Katy Johnson) in school and maybe, just maybe, win over Sammy’s dad. By the way, Sammy is played by Dorian D. Field and she was also the love interest in another Fabrizio De Angelis shot in the Southern U.S. movie — Savannah, Georgia — Karate Rock. Do you even understand how many Italian karate movies I have seen when I can recognize girlfriends from them?
Not only are there three more movies, there was also a TV series, Golden Kimono Warrior, which had the same cast as this movie, as well as David Warbeck as Larry’s dad and Marty “Boogeyman” Wright as a fighter named Alabama Bull.
June 5: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is 90s Action! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.
IFD has a website and yes, it’s near comical in how much they reveal and how they have never edited their many typos. I mean, this site is full of typos too — people email me about them all the time — but I am actively trying to clean them up.
Here’s what they had to say about Kickboxer the Champion: “A killer and a Trader must battle the odds in the name of honor and justice.
In Shanghai between the wars, one man, Kingsley, is determined to corner the opium trade for all of China by controlling the shipping routes. Boxer is an honest trader who stands in his way, Knowing that Boxer and his friend Richard are amateur kickboxers, Kingsley unleashes his champion, Bulldog on him.
Once Boxer has been eliminated all chaos breaks out in gangland, with crime bosses at each others throats and killers-for-hire assassinating all who oppose Kingsley. It is up to Boxer’s friend Richard to challenge Bulldog to a battle-to-the-death to ensure that justice is served.”
One person has reviewed this — to date — on Letterboxd and only 2 have seen it on IMDB. That’s incredible, because the ninja Godfrey Ho movies are packed with viewers. I guess he was right: you really should just make hundreds of ninja movies.
What is even more amazing is that this movie was edited together with new footage and also scenes from a movie made 17 years earlier — a record, defeating the previous champion, the 16 years different Terror, Sexo Y Brujeria — called Chu zu zuo shou di ren. It also has some recognizable people in it like Sing Chen and Carter Wong, who most American audiences recognize as Thunder from Big Trouble In Little China. Wayne Archer, who plays Kingsley, was also in Operation Condor and several other Godfrey Ho films.
At this point, Godfrey realized that every movie on the shelf in most video stores was saying kickboxer, so he probably made the right movie. It looks like an actual movie, but that’s not what I expect or demand from IFD movies. I want utter inanity and this doesn’t really give me that movie drug rush that I need. It does, however, have white dudes continually proving themselves to be the best fighters in the world, so if you do run a video store, file this under science fiction.
It does, however, make liberal and non-copyright-respecting use of the Psycho theme.
You have to admire the sheer gumption to make a movie that fuses the worlds of ninjitsu and softcore, a world that Adrian Lyne could not have envisioned when he put some honey on the table and put “You Can Leave Your Hat On” on the boombox.
Directed by Aaron Barsky — perhaps the only man who could be an assistant director on such wildly disparate movies as When Harry Met Sally, Atlas Shrugged, Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattanand Amityville II: The Possession — and written by Bill Counse and Don Pequignot (who teamed up for American Cyborg: Steel Warrior) as well as John Morrissey, this movie has about two or three scenes that seem to come from 9 1/2 Weeks and then they kind of just say, “Well, that’s enough” and go off and make a different movie.
Land developer Gruber (Robert Fieldsteel, who somehow was in both John Cassavetes’ Love Streams and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time) — yes, he looks just like Hans — is kicking Lisa Thorne (Andee Gray, who appeared in the movies Texas Godfather, Dead Men Don’t Die and Vascetomy: A Delicate Matter) out of her apartment. That real estate renegade is also throwing out Joe Vogue (Michael Phenicie, Evil Obsession, Lambada, Carnival of Souls) and sending ninjas his way. But Joe is also a ninja and he’s using the teachings of his mother Gladys (Magda Harout) to instruct his new love interest Lisa — yes, of course they hit it off — in the art of the ninja.
You know how Airplane!, Top Secret and The Naked Gun movies work but the movies made by other directors and writers using the same actors never do? Imagine if they didn’t have those actors.
For some reason, there’s a subplot here where Lisa starts overeating and keeps gorging herself on food. I guess fat people are always funny, as are people addicted to eating because it gives them some limited control over an uncontrollable life. Maybe I shouldn’t look so deeply into a movie that brings together eroticism and silent killers, you know?
The most creative thing about this movie is its tagline: Twenty men couldn’t knock him out. But one woman might.
Oh yeah — Tiny Lister Jr. and Rance Howard — as a ninja negotiator, I admit that the idea of that screen credit is also pretty funny — as well as Kane Hodder and Gerald Okamura all show up. I think if you made a martial arts movie in the 80s or 90s, you had to hire Okamura or actual ninjas would kill your family.
In the 80’s, Brian Bosworth was a big deal. A two time All-American with the Barry Switzer-coached Oklahoma Sooners, he wrote his autobiography during his first season with the Seattle Seahawks. Bosworth acted like a pro wrestler in real life, talking smack on the NCAA, publically claiming he would contain Bo Jackson (he didn’t) and trash talking John Elway so much that 10,000 Denver fans bought and wore “Ban the Boz” t-shirts. And those T-shirts? He manufactured and sold them.
Yep, Bosworth knew how to play the media game, even if his NFL career ended after three seasons. But what was next?
Acting. Of course! And the first film that Bosworth starred in was Stone Cold, a tough cop versus evil bikers epic.
Joe Huff (Bosworth) has been suspended for how rough he is on criminals. In fact, the film starts with him decimating several crooks that are robbing a supermarket. A government agent blackmails him into going undercover to stop a white supremacist biker gang, The Brotherhood.
The gang is led by Chains Cooper (Lance Henriksen, Near Dark), who is over the top insane. Just seeing the stuff the gang does in the opening montage will give you an idea of how amazing this film is going to be — they shotgun a priest through a stained glass window seconds into the start of the movie.
Joe becomes John Stone, but the rest of the gang doesn’t accept him. And his FBI contact Lance (Sam McMurray, Raising Arizona) is a germophobe and no help at all.
To finally be part of the gang, Joe/John has to kill a man. The FBI helps him fake the kill, but Chains’ top guy, Ice (William Forsythe, The Devil’s Rejects) still doesn’t believe in him. Luckily, a high-speed motorcycle chase leads to his death and our hero is in.
The gang has one goal: to kill DA Brent “The Whip” Whipperton, who has announced that he is going to become Governor of Mississippi and get tough on crime. They’ve stolen military weapons and plan on attacking the Supreme Court to save one of their own, the guy who killed that priest.
Joe/John falls in love with Nancy, Chains’ girl and offers her immunity if she cooperates. But then the man our hero had supposedly killed shows back up and the Brotherhood declares war on him. Chains takes the news that Nancy is cheating on him by shooting her, while he plans on putting a bomb on Joe/John’s body and dropping him from a helicopter onto the courthouse.
The gang manages to kill the DA, but our hero survives and kicks the snot out of Chains. Yet he is merciful and lets the man live. Bad idea — the villain grabs a gun and comes back for Joe/John, who is saved by Lance.
Stone Cold was originally going to be directed by Bruce Malmuth (Hard to Kill, Nighthawks), but personal problems led to the backstory of Bosworth’s character being removed from the movie and Craig R. Baxley (Action Jackson, I Come in Peace) taking over.
This movie is everything awesome about 80’s and 90’s action films and their cliches. Yet it’s even better, because you have Lance Henriksen writing all of his own dialogue, plenty of explosions, even more nudity, Bosworth’s impressive hair and outfits, and a fight scene between WWE’s one time heir apparent to Hulk Hogan, Tom Magee (seriously, he had a try out against Bret Hart that convinced everyone that he was going to be someone until everyone realized that Bret was the reason the match was so good) and Bosworth. And hey, how did Bosworth never get into pro wrestling, what with him coming from the same school as Steve “Dr. Death” Williams and being friends with Jim Ross?
I have no idea how this isn’t a movie that is treasured and celebrated by genre geeks, as is Patrick Swayze’s Road House. It’s such a time capsule of how one man captivated our attention and became a major star before disappearing.
This is an action movie that I bring up all the time when it comes to 90s action. More people should be losing their minds about it.
The Kino Lorber blu ray of Stone Cold has a brand new HD master from a 2K scan of the 35mm InterPositive; new interviews with the Boz, Henriksen, Arabella Holzbog and Sam McMurray; audio commenary by action film historians Mike Leeder and Arne Venema; and two newly masters 2K trailers.
Directed by Michael Pressman (who is still directing episodes of Law and Order today, but also made Some Kind of Hero, Doctor Detroit and The Great Texas Dynamite Chase) and written by Todd W. Langen, who also wrote the first film, the second Ninja Turtles movie toned down the violence, mostly removed the weapons from the turtle’s three fingered hands and was much more kid-like than the original. I mean, Vanilla Ice raps “Ninja Rap” at one point.
They also had twice the original budget and ended up — at the time — the second highest-grossing independent film ever behind the first movie.
Brian Tochi and Robbie Rist returned as Leo and Mike, while Adam Carl replaced Corey Feldman as Don and Laurie Faso replaced Josh Pais as Raph. Leo would now be played by Mark Caso, with Rob Tygner as the facial assistant and Larry Lam doing stunts. Mike was Michelan Sisti with Mak Wilson as the face and Nick Palma doing stunts. Don was Leif Tilden, with Rob Mills moving the face and Steven Ho doing the fighting. Raph was Kenn Troum with David Greenaway as the facial assistant and Hosung Pak did the stunts. He played Liu Kang in the first two Mortal Kombat games and was one of the fighters on WMAC Masters. Kevin Clash would return to voice and puppet Splinter with assistance from Rickey Boyd and Sue Dacre.
As Shredder died at the end of the last film, the Foot Clan would be led by Tatsu (Toshishiro Obata) before bringing their leader (François Chau replacing James Saito) back to life and transforming him into Super Shredder (wrestling genius Kevin Nash). They also gain two new mutants, an evil turtle named Tokka — Kurt Bryant in the suit with Rick Lyon animating the face and David Rowden doing stunts — and the wolf-like Rahzar — Mark Ginther in the costume with Gord Robertson animating the face and Hamilton Perkins doing the stunts. Both of these new villains were voiced by Frank Welker, who if you want an animal voiced in your movie or cartoon, you go to.
The new mutants were used instead of the cartoon’s Bebop and Rocksteady, who co-creator Peter Laird hated and said, “their constant one-note shtick in the first animated series was extremely annoying and silly to the point of being stupid.”
Paige Turco would replaced Judith Hoag as April O’Neil and Casey Jones doesn’t even show up.
Needless to say, I didn’t like this as much as the first, even if I love the look of the bad guys in the film.
What I do like is David Warner being in this as ooze expert Professor Jordan Perry and Ernie Reyes Jr. getting to be in the movie out of turtle costume. And yes, Tokka, Rahzar and Super Shredder are all amazing, but come on. Ninja rapping.
Bonus: Here is some artwork I did based on this movie.
Cauldron Films has outdone themselves with three mind melting Italian blu ray releases. Do you need them? You fucking NEED them. In fact, I’m going to spend the rest of this post explaining to you in great detail why you need these movies.
You can get the bundle of all three from Cauldron.
Off Balance (AKA Phantom of Death) (1988): Ruggero Deodato, how I love you. I love that you somehow convinced a real actor, Michael York, to be in an insane film about a man getting progeria and murdering people left and right. I can get how you got Donald Pleasence. I can even sort of understand how you got Edwige Fenech. But Michael York?
York plays Robert Dominici, a pianist who suffers from that previously mentioned genetic condition that causes him to rapidly age, and by that, I mean that his face starts looking like Klaus Kinski at age 200. To make up for the bad hand he’s been dealt, he starts killing people, including targeting Inspector Datti ‘s (Pleasence) daughter Gloria (Antonella Ponziani).
Deodato would later say, “I did Phantom of Death because it was based on a true element — the idea of growing old. And I got to work with Michael York and Donald Pleasence.” He also threw in that the producer demanded Fenech, who was miscast. This is also one of the few movies where she isn’t dubbed, so you get to hear her real voice.
I have a real weakness for post 1980 giallo so this movie is like the sweetest Galatine milk candies.
This movie was written by Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino in the early 80s and became the start of The New York Ripper. According to Clerici, he and Mannino were offended by how their script was changed, so they kept editing it until giving it to Deodato. Several pieces of what Fulci used are in this movie, including York’s character disguising his voice and taunting the police.
Beyond Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Marino Mase showing up, this movie is notable because Pleasence is pretty much playing Dr. Loomis’ Italian cousin, ranting and raving as he stalks a ninja-like York through the streets of Venice, yelling the word bastard over and over again. All this scene needs is Jack Sayer in his truck, rumbling up smelling of booze and lamenting, “You’re huntin’ it, ain’t ya? Yeah, you’re huntin’ it, all right.”
The new Cauldron Films blu ray release of Off Balance is limited to 1500 copies and the film itself has a 2K restoration from the original negative. Extras include one of the final interviews with Deodato, commentary with film historians Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, Italian and English trailers, a CD of the Pino Donaggio soundtrack, a double-sided poster, a slipcase with artwork by Eric Adrian Lee and a reversible wrap with alternate artwork.
Top Line (AKA Alien Termintor) (1988): Man, was Nello Rossati dating Franco Nero’s daughter or something? Not only did he get him into this movie, but a year later he would be the person — well, his pseudonym Ted Archer did, but you get the point — to finally get him to come back to his most famous role in Django Strikes Again. He also made the giallo La gatta in calore(assistant directed by Lamberto Bava and shot by Aristide Massaccesi!), a Napoleon-sploitation film called Bona parte di Paolina, a sex comedy called The Sensuous Nurse with Ursula Andress and Jack Palance, the poliziotteschi Don’t Touch the Children!, another sex comedy called Io zombo, tu zombi, lei zomba about four zombies running a hotel, a giallo-esque film named Le mani di una donna sola in which a lesbian countess seduces married women until insane asylum escapees chop her hands off, and an I Spit On Your Grave revengeomatic called Fuga scabrosamente pericolosa that stars Andy Sidaris villain Rodrigo Obregón.
Needless to say, I’m a fan.
Ted Angelo (Nero) starts the movie off literally telling a woman that he’s too tired to make love. Is this the great hero of Italian cinema? He seems exhausted throughout but it works; he’s a writer fallen on hard times and harder drinking. He’s supposed to be writing a book on pre-Columbian civilizations, but he’s falling deeper and deeper into depression and drunken days to the point that he’s fired by his publisher — and ex-wife — Maureen De Havilland (Miss World 1977 Mary Stävin, who by this point had already appeared in Adam Ant’s “Strip” video, Octopussyand A View to a Kill, as well as releasing the exercise album Shape Up and Dance with footballer George Best).
It seems like Ted’s luck is changing when he’s shown a ton of writings that came from a shipwreck of Spanish conquistadores. Except that the ship isn’t on the bottom of the ocean. It’s in a cave. And maybe that luck’s bad, because everyone connected with the ship, like art dealer Alonso Quintero (Willian Berger) is dying under mysterious circumstances. And oh yeah. That shipwreck in a cave is also inside a UFO.
The only real good luck that Ted gets is when an art historian and friend of Quintero named June (Deborah Barrymore, who is not related to Drew, but is instead of the daughter of Roger Moore and Italian actress Luisa Mattioli) helps him out.
What follows is a delirious descent into madness to the point that if you told me this was all a drug trip, I’d believe you. First, Ted is almost run over by former Nazi Heinrich Holzmann (George Kennedy, who is only in the movie for this one scene), then the camera crew he hires ends up being CIA spooks who want to murder him, then the KGB gets involved and then things get really weird.
Ted gets the idea that Maureen has the kind of connections that can save him and June. As they wait for her, a cyborg Rodrigo Obregón attacks them and only stops when he’s hit by a bull. He gets torn apart and sounds like he’s trying to say the words to “Humpty Dumpty” and man, I literallyjumped aout of my chair in the middle of the night I was so excited. He looks like Johnny Craig drew him!
Somehow, the movie then decides to top itself as another Rodrigo Obregón cyborg that looks exactly the same shows up with Maureen, who removes her skin to show us that she’s one of the aliens that have been on Earth for twelve thousand years and now are in control of most countries and multinational corporations.
At this point, is there any hope for any of us?
Yes, this is a movie where a gorgeous Swedish woman takes off all of her epidermis — of course we see her breasts, this is an Italian movie — to reveal that she’s a lizard alien that fulfills the worries of David Icke, then she vomits slime all over herself and tries to kill Franco Nero with her giant tongue.
If you told me this was an actual alien, I would believe you.
The first few times I’ve tried to watch this, I couldn’t get into it. It was too slow and felt too downbeat with Nero’s character feeling hopeless. So don’t be like me. I beg you, stick with this for an hour. Just an hour, because it’s not bad. I mean, yes, Franco Nero survives a car chase by throwing eggs, but it’s just slow, not badly made.
But the last thirty minutes make it all worth it.
When you get there, you’ll know exactly what I mean.
This is a movie all about the foreplay and then when it’s time to get to the actual sex, it’s the weirdest and best Penthouse Forum sex you’ve ever had and you feel like there’s no way that it happened and no one will ever believe you.
Also: Franco Nero screams almost every line and I respect that.
Also also: This is like a budget They Live by people who never saw that movie.
Also also also: This ends with Franco Nero living in a Cannibal Holocaustparadise and a song that sounds like something Disney characters would sing to.
The new Cauldron Films blu ray release of Top Line is limited to 1500 copies and the film itself has a 2K restoration from the original negative. Extras include interviews with Nero and Ercolani, a featurette on the alien theories of the film by parapolitics researcher Robert Skvarla and an in-depth audio commentary by film historian Eric Zaldivar including audio interviews from cast members, Deborah Moore and Robert Redcross, as well as additional insight on Italian cult films with actors Brett Halsey and Richard Harrison. There’s also a booklet, a double-sided poster and a high quality slipcase with artwork by Ghanaian artist Farika in conjunction with Deadly Prey Gallery.
The Last Match (1991): Often, I refer to movies as having an all-star cast, which is really a misnomer. After all, what I consider A-list talent certainly does not fit the rest of the world. The Last Match, however, has the very definition of what I consider an all-star cast. Let’s take a look at the lineup:
Ernest Borgnine: Amongst the 211 credits Mr. Borgnine amassed on his IMDB list, none other have him leading a football team against an unnamed Caribbean island to save his assistant coach’s little girl. He was, however, in four Dirty Dozen movies and The Wild Bunch, not to mention playing Coach Vince Lombardi in a TV movie. One assumes that he took this role to get away from his wife Tova and her incessant cosmetics shilling.
Charles Napier: As the American consul in this movie, Napier cuts a familiar path, which he set after appearing in the monster hit Rambo: First Blood Part II. For him, it was either playing bureaucrats or cops, thankless roles that he always brought a little something extra to. The exception to his typecasting is when he played Baxter Wolfe, the man who rocks Susan Lakes’ loins in the beyond essential Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
Henry Silva: If you need a dependable jerk and you have the budget of, well, an Italian movie about a football team that also does military operations, call Mr. Silva. He admirably performed the role of the heel — or antihero at other times in movies like Megaforce, Battle of the Godfathers, Cry of a Prostitute (in which he plays the Yojimbo role but in a mafia film; he also pushes Barbara Bouchet’s face inside a dead pig’s carcass while making love to her and he’s the good guy), Escape from the Bronx and so many more movies.
Martin Balsam: Perhaps best known for Psycho, Balsam shows up in all manner of movies that keep me up at 4 AM on nights when I know work will come sooner than I fear. He’s so interested in acting up a storm in this movie that he is visibly reading off cue cards.
They’ve all joined up for a movie that finds the coach’s daughter get Midnight Express-ed as drugs are thrown in her bag at the airport on the way home from a vacation with her hapless jerk of a boyfriend. At least he’s smart enough to call assistant coach Cliff Gaylor (Oliver Tobias), the father of the daughter whose life he has just ruined. And luckily for this film, Tobias was in a movie called Operation Nam nearly a decade before, which meant that they could recycle footage of him in combat. He also was The Stud and serviced Joan Collins, so he has my eternal jealousy going for him, too.
Who could dream up a movie like this? Oh, only Larry Ludman, but we see through that fake name and know that it’s Fabrizio De Angelis steering this ship, the maker of beloved trash such as Killer Crocodile, five Karate Warrior movies and three Thunder movies that star the beloved Mark Gregory as a stiff legged Native American warrior who pretty much cosplays as Rambo. And don’t forget — this is the man who produced Zombi, The House by the Cemetery, The Beyond and New York Ripper!
In this outing, he’s relying on Cannibal Holocaust scribe Gianfranco Clerici and House on the Edge of the Park writer Vincenzo Mannino to get the job done. For some reason, despite this being an Italian exploitation movie, we never see the coach’s daughter in jail. Instead, we’re treated to what seems like Borgnine in a totally different movie than everyone else, barking orders into his headphones as if he was commanding the team in a playoff game.
To make matters even more psychotic, the football players show up in full uniform instead of, you know, commando gear. One wonders, by showing up in such conspicuous costumes, how could they avoid an international incident? This is my lesson to you, if you’re a nascent Italian scumtastic cinema viewer: shut off your brain, because these movies don’t have plot holes. They’d have to have actual plots for that to be possible.
I say this with the fondest of feelings, because you haven’t lived until you witness a football player dropkick a grenade into a helicopter. Supposedly this was written by Gary Kent for Bo Svenson, who sold the script to De Angelis unbeknownst to the stuntman until years later. It was originally about a soccer team!
Former Buffalo Bills QB Jim Kelly* is in this, which amuses me to no end, as does the ending, where — spoiler warning — Borgnine coaches the team from beyond the grave!
You know how conservative folks have quit watching the NFL as of late? This is the movie to bring ‘em back, a film where the offensive line has fully automatic machine guns and refuses to kneel for anything. No matter what your politics, I think we can all agree on one thing: no matter how dumb an idea seems, Italian cinema always tries to pull it off.
*Other pros include Florida State and arena football player Bart Schuchts and USFL player Mark Rush, as well as Dolphins Jim Jensen, Mike Kozlowsky, Elmer Bailey and Jim Kiick. It’s kind of astounding that at one point, these players could just end up in a movie without the NFL knowing. This would never happen today.
The new Cauldron Films blu ray release of The Last Match is limited to 1500 copies and the film itself has a 2K restoration from the original negative. Extras include an interview with special effects artist Roberto Ricci; American Actors in a Declining Italian Cinema, a minidoc by EUROCRIME! director Mike Malloy; Understanding the Cobra, a video essay by Italian film expert Eugenio Ercolani and commentary by Italian exploitation movie critic Michael A. Martinez. You also get a trailer, an image gallery, a booklet with writings from Jacob Knight and David Zuzelo, a double-sided poster, a high quality slipcase featuring original artwork and a reversible Blu-ray wrap with alternate artwork.
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