Così fan tutte comes from Tinto Brass, who started his career as an avant-garde director but is best-known for his erotic cinema like Salon Kitty, The Key and P.O. Box Tinto Brass. He wrote the script with Bernardino Zapponi — who wrote Deep Red with Argento — and Francesco Costa. It’s based — somewhat — on the Mozart/da Ponte opera.
The American script and dubbing is by Ted Rusoff, who was the husband of the voice of all your favorite giallo queens, Carolyn De Fonseca.
It stars Claudia Koll, who is almost supernaturally gorgeous, and it’s not without reason that every man in this movie wants her. She works in a lingerie shop for Silvio (Renzo Rinaldi), who constantly is trying to make love to her, and is married to the nice yet boring Paolo (Paolo Lanza). She tries to spice up their love life by telling him stories of her being with other men, which he thinks are fantasy, but are all quite true after she gets pushed by her friend Antonietta (Isabella Deiana) and her sister Nadia (Ornella Marcucci).
She becomes obsessed with an antiques dealer named Donatien Alphonse (Franco Branciaroli) who is turn obsessed with her backside — Tinto Brass is living through his characters — and he leaves marks on her that Paolo discovers which places their marriage in jeopardy.
As for Koll, she passed what Brass called his “coin test.” The director said, “I have them presented in their skirts and without panties, then I drop a coin on the floor. Depending on what they let me see in the bow, I sense their cinematic potential. Believe me… it’s an infallible method.”
As you can see, this is a dirty movie. Yet it’s filled with sophistication, incredible cinematography and an actual story. And wow — a score by Pino Donaggio.
The Cult Epics blu ray release of this movie has a ew 4K transfer and restoration from the original negative. Plus, it has audio commentary by Eugenio Ercolani and Troy Howarth, trailers, an interview with Brass, outtakes, a phoro gallery, a double-sided sleeve with original uncensored Italian poster art, a 20-page illustrated booklet with liner notes by Eugenio Ercolani and Domenico Monetti and a slipcase to hold it all.
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. You can get this on blu ray from MVD.
In the small town of Copperton, Ohio, Paul Henson (Dino Tripodis), a former big-city journalist, buys a small local newspaper. He quickly falls into a wide-reaching conspiracy of ritualistic199 murder and cult mind control when he discovers that the entire town may be under the spell of Reverend Donovan (Nick Baldasare, Beyond Dream’s Door), Reverend Kane (John Dunleavy) and their flock. As the clues and corpses pile up, Henson and his family are thrust into a life-or-death struggle to expose the truth and stop the demonic cabal’s reign of evil.
Shot in 1989 by director Eric Swelstad on 16mm film and lost in obscurity and distribution false starts for over 30 years, Heartland of Darkness finally arrives on home video for the very first time and is packed with bonus features that spotlight the original creators and document the film’s long history and final completion.
Filmed as Fallen Angels, which was changed to Blood Church and then Heartland of Darkness, Swelstad abandoned the project before finding a distributor. Over the years various producers including Jim Wynorski, Rob Spera and Jody Savin wanted to release the film, but nothing happened. It almost came out from Media Blasters in 2004 before Visual Vengeance became the company to finish it and get it out into the world.
If that doesn’t sell you, Linnea Quigley plays an evil teacher.
I have no idea why this ever got lost. It’s a perfect early 90s direct to video horror film, but perhaps even better than the other movies you would have found on the shelf. Swlstad has a great eye for filmmaking and puts story over simple gore.
BONUS: I had the chance to speak with director Eric Swelstad about this film and his career.
B&S About Movies: This movie has been gestating for decades, right?
Eric Swelstad: It sure has. The original film was shot as Fallen Angels back in 1989, we ran out of money to finish it. At the time, the distributor in Florida named it Blood Church. And for a long time it had that name, but they also didn’t have the money to finish it. So for a long time, it sat on a literal shelf, waiting to be finished. And then finally, after the last couple of years, we want to get the money together to finish it and we were happy that Visual Vengeance made an offer to release it.
B&S: What do you think of what they did with your movie?
Eric: I think it’s terrific. I was telling Rob that I think his line is like the Criterion of, of, you know, genre releases. It’s really great. The packaging is terrific. The special features are great. There are three commentary track and a behind the scenes documentary that we made, as well as a bunch of other goodies that people can get.
B&S: You’re from Ohio, correct?
Eric: I grew up in both Indiana and Ohio. I went to college at Ohio State University where this was actually a master’s thesis for myself and my cinematographer. So great memories and great times at Ohio State.
B&S: You’re also part of another OSU student film, Beyond Dream’s Door, right?
Eric: Exactly. I was one of the ADs on that film. It was a great experience. So that was how I learned about making a feature at the university and I was like, “Oh, this is great. I’m going to try to do this as well for my Master’s.” And we were able to pull it off.
B&S: I love that both of those movies came out of OSU. They don’t feel like anything else on the shelves at the time.
Eric: Exactly. Yeah, they’re a little bit unique. And of course, some of the same actors like Nick Baldasare and John Dunleavy are in both films. And, of course, our movie was made at the height of the Satanic Panic in the late 80s. So we were capitalizing on what was going on in the country at the time. And it was on the news all the time. We capitalized on that. I came up with the idea for the script. And I said, “Man, this would be a great topic to deal with. made it an action film.”
You know, it’s like a horror action film.
B&S: Were you a horror fan before you made this?
Eric: I was a horror fan. I was more into like movies like Halloween and The Exorcist. You know, I was bmore into those films than I was into stuff like Italian giallo cinema. But I certainly was more into the occult. The Omen was a big influence. Films like that where you’re kind of like thinking, okay, these are ordinary people, but this crazy scary stuff is happening to them. That was what was interesting to me. And then, of course, I love action films. So I incorporated that into the action aspect of this to make it what I call an action horror film.
B&S: What were your influences on this?
Eric: I was heavily influenced by the usual suspects. George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, William Friedkin. Coppola, of course, was a huge influence. You know, there were just so many. John Carpenter. I just looked I finally got to meet him a few years ago and I told him just how important Halloween and Escape from New York were to me. I mean, all those great, great films, and I know he’s heard it a hundred times before, but he was so nice. I also recently met Walter Hill. One of my favorites. Yeah, my favorite directors from the 70s and 80s. And I told him, I teach a class about theology in film and we screened The Warriors as an example of Greek mythology and he was tickled by that.
B&S: What do you do today?
Eric: I’m the head of the film department at Valley College in Los Angeles in the San Fernando Valley and love it. I’ve been doing it for about 20 years now. And it’s been great. In fact, I hired some of my students to do some work on this film on Heartland of Darkness. They helped sound with the mix and one of my top students, she produced the documentary Deeper Into the Darkness, which is the behind the scenes movie. It was great having my students work on the main show.
B&S: What’s it like seeing young students being at where you were when you made this movie?
Eric: It’s so inspiring because I give them all these warnings about what not to do, because I went through it and the biggest one I tell them is don’t make a feature film if you can’t finish it. Don’t run out of money like we did. The things that we messed up on this movie are great lessons for today. I mean, things ranging from direction to editing, a whole bunch of stuff. So I think if anything, I just enjoy sharing experiences with the students to let them know what worked for us and what didn’t work for us.
B&S: I love the films that Visual Vengeance is putting out because they’re all so original. And even though the technology to make movies is more available and it should be so much more democratic to shoot a movie today, you don’t see the same drive.
Eric: The tools to make low budget films are there and it’s great. And you know, you could literally could go out and make your own feature film on your cell phone, which is wonderful. But you’ve got to have a story. You’ve got to have something to say. There are so many films that never see the light of day because they’re not that good. And there’s a reason for that. If you’re going to pour your heart and soul into something, you want it to be really good. You don’t want to be like something they would find any every other day. And it just you know, I teach screenwriting, so I talk about, it’s all about the story. It’s all about the script. You’ve got to have a really interesting story to begin and a lot of horror films today. I’m not really into because so many movies today are built around the jumpscare. How many jumpscare should we have in this film? Where the jumpscare is going to be? And that’s just a cliche. Anybody can do a jumpscare! You can put a sheet over your head and jump out at somebody and that’s a jumpscare. But it needs a story. It needs characters that we care about and follow.
B&S: I hate when people say, “Well, Val Lewton’s movies had jumpscares.” Well, they also had stories.
Eric: The great directors that we think of, you know, they didn’t just jump stuff out. They actually had stories. One of my mentors was the late great Robert Wise. He directed a lot of great movies, one of my favorite horror films he did was called The Haunting. That movie is so scary because of sound. It’s what you don’t see that is scary. And the sound is so good in that film and other films like that too. We can all learn from those master filmmakers about how to do horror films.
You’ve got to have a great script. I mean, that was a great script. The remakes that have come out have suffered because they were all about the technical stuff, the jumpscares and they really weren’t about the story. So if you spend time on the story, you’re gonna nail it. You’re gonna get a really cool film, but it’s all about the story. You’ve got to go back and think about character, plot development, character arc. The third act is critical. So all those things may add up to a really good movie.
B&S: I keep getting fooled by the A24-style horror movies that have a great trailer and a not-so-great final film.
Eric: They run out of steam. They delivered it on the first and second act, but by the ending, they’re like, “Oh, we already showed all that stuff. Let’s just wrap it up.”
Look at something like John Carpenter’s Halloween. To really know how to just do a great payoff, he had such a great ending and great characters. Now that’s a good example of how to end a movie. The Exorcist is like that as well. You’ve got the stick the landing.
Imagine if The Omen petered out before the ending.
B&S: Do you advise to start with that ending?
Eric: If you start backward, you know, you can come up with a really good ending and you work backward. That can sometimes work but you got to have a really, really good ending that we don’t see coming. I tell my students, “Twist endings are great. You’ve got to build to them. You got to have a great delivery, but you got to have stuff before that.”
You can do a good twist today. All movies need to have a twist. You’ve got to have something we don’t see coming. Otherwise, no one’s gonna make it.
B&S: What has worked for you lately?
Eric: I really liked It Follows. A lot of it is shot like Halloween, with the stuff shot during daylight and I love that they did really creepy things shot during broad daylight.
Wikipedia claims that this is the first movie given an NC-17 for violence instead of sexual content. By the look of things — you can see the rating on the MPAA site — it seems true but after all, sometimes hype is better than the actual real tale, right?
Police detective Vicki Stewart (Traci Lords) is undercover as a prostitute with her lover Al (Scott Patterson) as backup when she finds the crook she’s been hunting, Salvador (Angelo Tiffe). As he starts making out with her, he finds her concealed handgun and everything goes wild with cars blowing up, machine guns firing on crowded streets and Lords even flying out of the limo.
Captain Jackson (Yaphet Kotto) takes her off the case after all of the property damage, even if she got $50 million worth of drugs off the streets. As for Salvador, his boss gives him a week to get the white powder back.
If Vicki isn’t on the case, she’s going to have some fun. She overhears a rape victim being discharged and tells her there’s no way that the three men who destroyed her will ever see jail. Instead, she visits them at home and brutalizes them. She also goes to a factory where the boss sexually harasses women and slaps him into oblivion, all things that get her in even more trouble.
Vicki has had what we call “a day” and it gets worse when she catches Al in bed with someone else. She sets his car on fire and then heads back to the police station, the very place where Salvador is coming to get his cocaine.
Directed and written by Charles T. Kanganis, this is the perfect use of Traci Lords in a movie. She’s a near-unstoppable force of destruction who is the best cop on the force despite how much destruction happens around her. She’s actually a very male-coded hero and yet, you know, looks like Traci Lords.
Submission of a Woman was directed and written by Alessandro Lucidi, who directed two comedies, La maestra di sci and Il marito in vacanza but mostly was an editor. He’s the son of Maurizio Lucidi (It Can Be Done, Amigo; The Designated Victim).
Luisa (Daniela Poggi. The Gestapo’s Last Orgy) is an actress who wants to move past the sexual roles she keeps getting hired for and instead spend more time with her husband Giorgio (Gianluca Favilla) and their child Francesca. She’s also getting calls from someone (Paolo Lorimer) who has already killed one woman and has selected Luisa for his second victim. Then, the killer attacks, easily stopping her husband before she locks herself and her baby inside the home, a place where the man who wants her dead has already cut the phone line.
This movie starts by stealing the vampire beginning of Body Double and then has a theme song that songs like “Laura’s Theme” from Twin Peaks. But for some reason, I stuck with this and while rape revenge is one of my least favorite genres, this ends up being watchable. That’s more than you can say for a lot of gialli made in the 90s.
Divorce attorney Sara Lancetti (Nancy Brilli, Hannah from Demons 2) is planning her wedding to Max Altieri (Giulio Scarpati), which comes just in time for someone to start sending her threatening letters and phone calls, sounding like Night Killer, and always with yellow roses. If she goes through with her marriage, the person sending them says that they will kill her.
When talking with whoever this stalker could be, she realizes that he is one of the many men in her past. Seeing as how she doesn’t want to tell Max about her life before him, she starts to investigate them to see who wants her dead. As she meets each man — hoping to listen to their voice and compare them to the phone calls — she feels something for one old lover, inflames the passion in a sensitive ex named Daniele (Claudio Bigagli) and even learns a secret that has nothing to do with the potential killer from a third.
Can Sara find the person who is after her before she marries her true love? Is he her true love? Will she have any passion with any of the many exes that she’s finding and reconnecting with? I mean, it is an erotic thriller. Or giallo, because they are so close.
Directed by Gianpaolo Tescari and written by Silvia Napolitano, this has an interesting idea, even if the execution isn’t as exciting as the films of the 70s.
The Black Gloves is a 1992 giallo that goes past the tease and goes directly to hardcore. It’s directed by Frank Simon, who is really Silvio Bandinelli, who spent his career in adult. He also wrote the script with Ernesto de Pascale.
Also released as Private Detective and Masquerade, this is available in softcore and hardcore form. Linda Forrester (Raven, billed as Nellie Marie Vickers; she is also in the mainstream film Angel Eyes, directed by Gary Graver as well as adult classics like Taboo and Curse of the Cat Woman) and Guido Moranto (Joey Silvera, also an adult star) are working undercover to investigate art theft from collector Anesto, whose half-brother has already been murdered by a killer with black gloves.
Italian adult star Eva Orlowsky, who appears the Illona “Cicciolina” Staller’s directed and written movie Diva Futura – L’avventura dell’amore which is about a group of forward thinking women trying to get a cure for AIDS finished before the Vatican stops it, plays the art dealer’s wife Anna, who has her own affair happening with Roberto (Rocco Siffredi, maybe the most famous European male adult actor ever; he takes his name from Roch Siffredi, the character played by Alain Delon in Borsalino).
It also has Teri Weigel in the cast, who was one of the first Playboy Playmates to do Penthouse and adult, as well as someone who crossed over into the mainstream, appearing in Predator 2 and Marked for Death.
It’s pretty amazing that this is a shot on film adult giallo, even if the murders are pretty mild and it all looks like it was shot for TV.
Starlet DuBois (Florence Guérin, who was about a decade late to be a giallo queen but made plenty of fun late in the game entries like Bizarre, Cattive Ragazze, Faceless, Too Beautiful To Die, Knife Under the Throat) transforms at night, kind of like Angel, to become Sherry, a prostitute in Times Square, all to hunt for her brother’s murderer. See, or some reason, her brother was playing Russian roulette with a hand grenade that went off and killed three men, injured six others and castrated one of them. Whoever that is, well, they’re slicing the members of men all over the Deuce. This worries a cop named Flanigan (David Hess as a good guy?) who wants her out of his turf.
If this all starts to feel like it’s referencing Body Double, well, that movie was a giallo, so Brescia is just getting back some interest for the Italians. DePalma’s film was called Omicidio a Luci Rosse in Italy, which means Red Light Killer. This is Blue Light Killer.
Brescia was also into music videos at this time in his career — just watch Iron Warrior — and this definitely has that, as well as primitive computer graphics and David Hess in a dress trying to pretend he’s Florence Guérin, who is one of the most gorgeous women in the history of, well, existence. And he’s David Hess.
Directed and written by Bruce Robinson, this movie is about how being a cop in Los Angeles has destroyed John Berlin (Andy Garcia). His friend Freddy Ross (Lance Henriksen) tells him to move to Eureka, a smaller town, and regroup. His big city ways cause headaches for other cops, like John Taylor (Graham Beckel) whose promotion he takes.
Berlin finds a hand in a dumpster, one that has marks on the fingers as if it read Braille. He believes its either part of a missing girl known as Jennifer or part of that case. By working with some of his old team, he learns that in the last four years, six women — most of them blind — have either been found dead or are still missing within a 300-mile radius of San Diego. He thinks that Jennifer was seven and the eighth was Amber, the missing roommate of blind music teacher Helena Robertson (Uma Thurman).
Against all rules of being a police officer, Berlin falls in love with her. She looks like his ex and he’s obsessed by the case and still getting past all his PTSD from the things that he’s seen. After the killer attacks her, Ross accompanies Berlin on a stakeout at her dorm room. As Helena stays with Ross’ wife Margie (Kathy Baker), the killer knocks out Berlin and kills his friend with Ross’ service firearm. FBI special agent St. Anne (John Malkovich) believes that Berlin is the killer, but his questions open that last bit of knowledge that the hero of a giallo needs to see the information that he is missing. He thinks Sgt. Taylor is the killer but no one believes him. Margie bails him out. She takes Helena back to her dorm as Berlin races to get there to save him. Yet Taylor catches up to the woman he’s been chasing and then realizes that it’s Margie, who kills him and gets revenge for the loss of her husband.
The director wasn’t happy with how this ended up. Robinson said, “There were four different heads of studio on that movie, they all wanted different things. The worst thing happened before we made the movie and that was having Andy García, great guy that he is, on the movie. I didn’t write it for a handsome young lead, I wrote it for a shagged out old cop like Gene Hackman or Al Pacino…he problem is the moment you see Andy García and Uma Thurman on screen together you think, “That ain’t bad. A couple of romantic leads, that’s nice.” The whole point was that he was this fucked guy; he was Rod Steiger if you like.”
García said that twenty minutes of the film had been cut before its release, including an all-night alcohol binge and more of the interrogation, which he said was the heart of the movie and made for a totally different movie.
28. THE BIG TAKEOVER: An A.I.’er that goes haywire.
Cyborg 2 is everything I wanted Cyborgto live up to.
Directed by Michael Schroeder, who wrote it with Mark Geldman and Ron Yanover, this is way better than I could even imagine. It’s like it was made for me: a movie with Casella “Cash” Reese (Angelina Jolie) on the run with her combat trainer Colton “Colt 45” Ricks (Elias Koteas), guided by the voice of a mysterious escaped cyborg named Mercy (Jack Palance, who also does the intro to this movie and it made me literally throw myself off the couch and scream out loud).
She’s been filled with Glass Shadow, an explosive that is meant to destroy the filled with the Kobayashi board of directors and increase the power of Pinwheel and their CEO, Martin Dunn (Allen Garfield). That’s a lot of power as they’re seemingly the two most important cybernetics companies in the universe of Cyborg 2.
Casella and Colton are being tracked by Chen (Karen Sheperd), a bounty hunter who wants to reverse her orders and have her kill the Pinwheel board, and Danny Bench (Billy Drago), a killer who has spent years fixing his face after a job gone bad years ago. He’s also a dandy 40s detective looking cyborg who challenges people to kickboxing matches. Man, Billy Drago is the best.
Mercy finally appears after years of being just an urban legend and activates his own Glass Shadow bomb and wipes out Pinwheel. Our heroes are able to escape and Colton grows into old age along with his immortal cyborg lover, who finally shuts herself down and lives in a dream state forever instead of living without him.
Of course Tracy Walter is in this. So does Sven-Ole Thorsen. If this was made a few years later, the soundtrack would certainly have God Lives Underwater on it. Or Sister Machine Gun.
Jolie told the New York Times, “After I saw it, I went home and got sick. I saw it and I threw up. Just nausea. But the kickboxing was fun. It was the first time I was sent to do kickboxing. But I was 17 and I think I thought I was making a real movie, which is odd, since there’s a scene when I’m decapitated and talking … as one does. But, yeah, I saw it and got really sick. I just remember my brother Jamie holding me and saying, It’s going to be all right.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. I loved every second of this.
There’s also a sequel with Khrystyne Haje taking over the role of Cash, Malcolm McDowell as the bad guy and appearances by Richard Lynch, William Katt and Rebecca Ferratti. Sure, it ruins the perfect ending of this, but you know how much I love a sequel.
20. THE GREAT UNSTREAMBLE: Search all night with all your might, it still ain’t found on any site. Bonus for desert/drought content.
John Henry Brennick (Christopher Lambert), and his wife Karen B. Brennick (Loryn Locklin) have been punished for having a second child. He thinks that she escapes, but he’s been sent to the Fortress, a private 30-level maximum security prison run by the Men-Tel Corporation (it’s the Australian theme park Warner Bros. Movie World).
Every prisoner has an intestinators inside them which allows the guards to put them in pain or even kill them. Director Poe (Kurtwood Smith) uses a computer called Zed-10 (voiced by Carolyn Purdy-Gordon) to keep everything running and the prisoners working for the good of the company.
John is inside a crowded cell with Abraham (Lincoln Kilpatrick), who is nearly Poe’s slave; D-Day (Jeffrey Combs), a computer expert who knows how to blow things up; Nino Gomez (Clifton Collins Jr.), a teen captive; Stiggs (Tom Towles), a prison bully and his friend Maddox (Vernon Wells). After Stiggs and Maddox try to intimidate him, John gets into a fistfight and Maddox is killed by a security guard. As punishment, John is mindwiped, forgetting that his wife is also a prisoner and that Men-Tel will own his child when it is born. He gives D-Day Maddox’s intestinator before he is captured.
Poe takes Karen as his wife as long as he promises to not punish John after this. She sneaks into a room and reprograms John’s mind while D-Day figures out how to shut down the intestinators. During a riot, the Strike Clones are sent in, but the prisoners soon kill one and take its flamethrower. Soon, he learns that Men-Tel doesn’t negotiate and the full brunt of their security teams come down on the prison, just as his wife starts to give birth. And if that happens, the company will give her a fatal cesarian.
Stuart Gordon was such a dependable genre director, even if he switched from Lovecraft horror to giant robots and even men in ice cream suits. According to Gordon, Arnold Schwarzenegger was a big fan of Re-Animator and was almost in this: “It was Arnold Schwarzenegger that got me the job and it was because of Re-Animator. We used Arnold’s body double in Re-Animator. The first reanimated corpse is a guy named Peter Kent, Arnold’s double. He’s got those big muscles. He got Arnold to see Re-Animator and Arnold liked it so much that he had a screening of it in his home, inviting all of these people, including producer John Davis. John had the rights to Fortress and Arnold was going to do it. For some reason, I’m not sure why, Arnold finally decided that he wasn’t going to do the movie and dropped out. They had a big budget, probably like 60 million, 70 million dollars, which was a huge budget in those days. Now it sounds small. Anyway, he dropped out and the budget went down. They cut the budget to about 15 million dollars.”
Fortress takes the prison film and adds in near-future cyberpunk. I don’t have to tell you how correct the script by Troy Neighbors and Steven Feinberg is today. The U.S. has more people in jail — 565 citizens per every 100,000 — than any other country in the world. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, those in jail only earn 12 cents to 40 cents per hour for jobs serving the prison and 23 cents to $1.15 per hour in Federal Prison Industries factories, which include food processing, shrinkwrapping and packaging product and even have worked in call centers for politicians.
None of them wear intestinators. Stay tuned on that, though.
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