Change Your Image
BandSAboutMovies
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againThe only movie missing are: The Making of Bikini School 3 Daddies' Girls
Reviews
All the Sins of Sodom (1968)
Sarno
The title of this movie is awesome and then I found out that it's also called All The Evils Of Satan and I don't know if I could be more enthusiastic about a film.
New York City shutterbug Henning (Dan Machuen) is supposed to shoot some nudes for his agent Paula (Peggy Sarno) but is obsessed with shooting the evil that lives inside all women. To capture this, he takes images of Leslie (Maria Lease, who would go on to be a director of adult films as well as Dolly Dearestand being the script supervisor on Better Off Dead) as she hangs from the ceiling of his studio. After, they make love, and while Henning usually never sees another of his conquests again, she feels different. She's also mindblowingly gorgeous, which helps.
He also meets another model named Joyce (Marianne Prevost) who he feels sorry for. She's homeless and needs a hand up. He invites her to stay in his studio and assist him, but when he grows angry that he can't capture with his camera what he sees with his eyes, he learns that she's the perfect muse for his images of base morality. Paula even tells him that she sent Joyce his way, claiming ""I sent her to you because she is what you're looking for. If I ever I saw it, she's the daughter of Satan."
That means that things aren't going to end well for anyone. Again, this is in stark black and white and while the lovemaking scenes are quite erotic, they're mostly clothed. Then again, when they were made by Sarno, this burned the celluloid.
Urlatori alla sbarra (1960)
Interesting Fulci
When writers cover Italian exploitation film genres, often the concentration is on horror, cannibal movies, mondos, Westerns, giallo. Anything but musicarello, which are jukebox musicals inspired by Elvis' Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. The movie that really broke this filone - a small stream, so to speak, that flows from the larger river of Italian cinema - was Go, Johnny, Go!, which was directed by Paul Landres and starred Jimmy Clanton, Chuck Berry, Ritchie Valens and Eddie Cochran. Released in Italy as Vai, Johnny vai!, it had sequences filmed just for the Italian market with singer Adriano Celentano opening and closing the movie.
In a pre-MTV world, musicarello featured young singers in the main roles - like Gianni Morandi, Al Bano, Mal Ryder, Tony Renis, Adriano Celentano, Bobby Solo, Orietta Berti, Little Tony, and more - as they performed songs from their latest albums.
As you may expect, several of the same directors who excelled in other Italian genres made their own music movies, including Bruno Corbucci (Questo pazzo, pazzo mondo della canzone), Ferdinando Baldi (Rita of the West), Ruggero Deodato (Donne... botte e bersaglieri), Duccio Tessari (one of the founders of the Italian Western, he made Per amore... per magia...) and the unholy team of Antonio Margheriti and Renato Polselli (Io Ti Amo).
Yet the originator of native Italian-made musicarello is the very same man who most in America only know as the Godfather of Gore. Yes, Lucio Fulci made Ragazzi del Juke-Box and the second example of the genre, Urlatori alla Sbarra (Howlers In the Dock).
Wikipedia says that the musicarello is a mix between "fotoromanzi (photo comics or fumetti), traditional comedy, hit songs and tentative references to tensions between generations." This is before the Days of Lead and radicalized political moments that would make up much of the late 1960s and 1970s in Italy. And as the genre gets older, generational revolt wouldn't be something studios wanted to sell to, particularly as the music in this genre was no longer being directed toward young people. Think how the American-International Pictures beach movies seem so dated in just a few years versus movies that Hollywood was releasing by the end of the 60s and early 70s.
A company that makes blue jeans has to rethink their image because of a group called the Teddy Boys, young men and women who love American rock 'n roll. The leaders of this music-loving group of kids are Joe Il Rosso (Joe Sentieri, whose biggest song was "Uno dei tanti," which was translated by Leiber and Stoller and recorded by several English-speaking artists as I (Who Have Nothing); he appears in several films, including The Most Beautiful Wife with Ornella Muti), Mina (Mina, Italy's best-selling music artist of all time; known as the "Queen of Screamers" and the "Tigress of Cremona;" she was banned from TV and radio due to her relationship with married actor Corrado Pani and out of wedlock pregnancy. She was so famous and beloved that this ban ended in a year despite her songs being about religion, sex and one of her favorite things, smoking. Her look was so alien to Italian audiences - shaved eyebrows, dyed blonde hair and fragrant sex appeal - which makes Mina look as cool in 2024 as she did in 1960) and Adriano (Adriano Celentano, who introduced rock 'n roll to Italy with songs like "24.000 baci", "Il tuo bacio è come un rock", and "Si è spento il Sole;" he's in Fulci's first music movie as well as a singer in La Dolce Vita. His daughter Rosalinda is best-known for playing Satan in The Passion of teh Christ).
The jeans company wants the kids to improve their image and do good deeds, yet their remain suspicious of them. While this is happening, Joe falls in love with Giulia (Elke Sommer, Baron Blood) - and can you blame him? - whose father Giomarelli (Mario Carotenuto) runs the TV network and wants these rockers off television and to stop influencing other young folks.
Thanks to Italo Cinema, I can report there are nearly twenty songs in this:
Joe Sentieri: "Let's Go," "Moto Rock, " "Millions of Scintille" and "Don't Talk:
Mina: "I Know Why," "Nessuno," "Whisky" and "Tintarella di Luna"
Adriano Celentano: "Rock Matto," "Blue Jeans Rock," "Nikita Rock," "Impressive for You" and Your Cheek is Like a Rock
Chet Baker: "Arrdividerci"
Brunetta: "Precipito" and "Beby Rock"
Umberto Bindi: "Odio"
Gianni Meccia: "Delicate soldiers"
Corrado Lojacono: "Carin"
I Brutos:" I, Blue Devil"
You may look through that list and be somewhat amazed that Chet Baker is in it. The "Prince of Cool" was seen by Hollywood as a potential movie star but the promise of his early career was marred by a life filled with drug addiction. That comes up in this movie, as he is often sleeping - and often, yes, he really was nodding off - and it's turned into a comedic plot point.
This is also the first film appearance of model - and the only woman fashion designed Valentino ever loved - Marilù Tolo. She's also in one of my all-time favorite Italian Westerns, Django Kill... If You Live, Shoot!
Fulci co-wrote this with Giovanni Addessi (who would later write and produce Web of the Spider) and Vittorio Vighi (I Maniaci!). Yet his closest collaborator was Piero Vivarelli, who is listed as screenwriter and assistant director. Vivarelli - according to previously cited Italo Cinema - "had been working for radio stations since the 1950s and from the 1960s onwards was editor of the music magazine Big, for which he always wrote the editorials himself and which was regularly devoured by young people looking for good music. Vivarelli's opinion carried weight; whoever he thought was good could become famous, but whoever he ignored was ignored by the audience."
Vivarelli lived a wild life. In addition to his music influence, he directed comic book adaptions Avenger X and Satanik, wrote Django and later in his career wrote the story for D'Amato's Emauelle In Bangkok and the lunatic Emanuelle In America. Besides that, he was the only foreigner other than Che Guevara to have his membership card for the Cuban Communist Party signed by Fidel Castro.
Working together with cinematographer Gianni Di Venanzo (who would go on to shoot 8 1/2, The 10th Victim and Juliet of the Spirits before dying way too young) , Fulci and Vivarelli created a new visual template for how young audiences saw music that would be adapted by Scopitones and music videos.
Not to be a broken record, but Fulci remains, as ever, so much more than his horror movies.
Come svaligiammo la banca d'Italia (1966)
Early Fulci
I was reading through Letterboxd reviews the other day and I saw someone mention in a Fulci horror film that there was a humorous moment that they didn't enjoy but that made sense because Fulci wasn't known for making comedies.
Except that Fulci wrote Toto In the Moon and directed The Thieves, Letto a tre piazze, The Swindlers, I Maniaci, I due evasi di Sing Sing, Oh! Those Most Secret Agents, I due pericoli pubblici, How We Got into Trouble with the Army, 002 Operazione Luna, The Two Parachutists, How We Stole the Atomic Bomb, Operation St. Peter's, The Eroticist, Dracula in the Provinces, My Sister-In-Law and The Long, the Short, the Cat.
Of the 57 movies Lucio Fulci directed that are listed on Letterboxd, 16 are comedies.
Anyways...
Like many of his comedy films (thirteen, in case you were guessing), this stars the team of Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia. As always, they play two Sicilian morons. Franco is completely deranged and uses his body and wild face to try and communicate in the loudest ways possible while Ciccio is the mustache-having bully who thinks he's the more intelligent of the duo but is quite dumb.
In this movie, they have an older brother who is such an incredible thief that he is known as the Master. Paolo (Maro Pisu) wants his brothers to stop being criminals so that they don't lead the police to him, so he sets them up with money, homes and girlfriends. Yet the two are so annoying that they can never keep these women and way too dumb to not want to be criminals like their brother.
Then Paolo meets two singers, Marilina (Lena von Martens, Operation Counterspy) and Rosalina (Mirella Maravidi, Requiescant, Terror-Creatures from the Grave) who are totally gorgeous and just as insipid as his siblings. He sets them up and leaves the country to hire experts to pull off his most daring and final heist, robbing the Bank of Italy.
The problem is that the ladies are gangsters and want the brothers to show just how good they are at being crooks and pull off their brother's plan before he gets back.
A heist film that is a comedic version of Seven Golden Men, this even finds Franco and Ciccio dressing up as Diabolik to rob a safe. Plus, you get appearances by Solvi Stubing (Strip Nude for Your Killer), Kitty Swan (House of 1,000 Dolls), Maria Luisa Rispoli (Kriminal) and Adriana Ambesi (Fangs of the Living Dead).
Fulci wrote this with Roberto Gianviti (who wrote 134 movies including Don't Torture a Duckling, Murder Rock, A Lizard In a Woman's Skin and The Psychic) and Amedeo Sollazzo (who wrote the Italian Western with my favorite title, God Was in the West, Too, at One Time) from a story by Alfonso Brescia, who would use the name Al Bradley to make the music video-like Ator movie Iron Warrior, as well as the director of The Beast In Space and a whole galaxy full of Italian space operas.
I have to confess that I hated the movies of Franchi and Ingrassia when I first watched them but now find them charming. Maybe it was Argento discussing. How great they are in an interview I saw with him or it could be that I had to learn how to appreciate their basic humor. However I got here, I laughed several times while watching this and loved the space age sets and opening super thief action.
America bangmungaeg (1976)
Brucelesspolitation!
Originally a South Korean movie called Amelika bangmungaeg (also called Visitor of America), this was released in the U. S. by Aquarius Releasing with new dubbing, an incredibly insane poster of Bruce Lee emerging from a grave to defend a half nude woman and battle a flying bat baby as well as a new beginning filmed in the U. S. where lighting strikes the grave of Bruce Lee, who soon emerges, ready to fight. In an amazing display of absolute lunacy, that's it. No more Bruce Lee.
No, instead, we follow Wong Han (Jun Chong, a judo master who used the name Bruce K. L. Lea; he's the founder of the World United Martial Arts Organization (WUMAO); has trained Lorenzo Lamas, Sam J. Jones, Phillip and Simon Rhee, and Heather Graham; he also shows up in L. A. Street Fighters, Silent Assassins and Street Soldiers) as he makes his way to America to try and learn who killed his brother Han Ji-Hyeok.
Also: It appears that Wong's brother died by jumping off his apartment building and is being incinerated in the furnace of the same building, which ends with Wong scooping up all the burned bones and placed them around his neck, along with a photo of the deceased and wandering the streets looking for answers. He's then attacked by a man in black, who he defeats and kills, which leads to his arrest.
Wong is bailed out by a rich man named Scott Lee and asked to find a woman named Susan (Deborah Dutch, Deep Jaws, 976-EVIL II), who ends up being a waitress. Why Lee hired him is a mystery because he's shown that he has no idea how to find the killers of his brother, so it's not like they had a precedent for his detective skills. Anyways, he decides to help Susan and teaches her martial arts so quickly that she can fight nearly as well as him in mere days. She soon informs our hero that she learned from her job in Lee's Turkish bathhouse that five men were involved in the death of his brother: the black man Wong has already battled, as well as a white man, a Japanese fighter, a Mexican and a cowboy. Seeing as how there are about 4 million people in Los Angeles, this won't be easy to find them. Then again, he didn't find the killers yet and did find Susan, so he's batting .500 which would get you in the hall of fame.
Then, our hero goes to a Christmas parade. Why? So the people there can look directly at the camera and the filmmakers could shoot this without permits. Our hero is a strange guy, one who won't sleep in Susan's house for moral reasons, so she buys him an RV to sleep in outside her house.
Anyways, the cowboy is the last alive, killing the other killers before Wong and that means that our hero and he will have to battle one on one. He fights like a pro wrestler, which I can appreciate, and then we learn that maybe Wong's brother is still alive as nearly everyone else dies. Yes, our hero can't even protect the woman who helps him, choosing to do a fancy flying kick instead of just disarming the bad guy.
Directed by Lee Doo-yong and written by Hong Ji-Un, this movie is really something else. It's not good and yet I loved every moment. I kept thinking about the trailer and the poster and how they had to have led people to say, "Bruce Lee versus the black angel of death? How can I not watch this?"
Sin You Sinners (1963)
Sin You Sinners
Bobbi (June Colbourne) is the kind of person who could only appear in a roughie directed by Joe Sarno. She's a combination exotic dancer and fortune teller who uses a Haitian voodoo amulet to remain young and oh yeah, she can control almost any man, like her lover and bongo player Dave (Derek Murcott).
Her daughter Julia (Dian Lloyd) doesn't want to live in the world her mother dominates. She's also a dancer and doubles as a possessed woman during her mother's psychic flim flam shows, raking in money from the marks and rubes.
After a night getting sodas, she gives her body to Ben Furman (Charles Clements). But soon, Dave decides to steal the amulet, putting everyone's lives in a tailspin. Didn't Dave already know that every one of Bobbi's lovers has died horribly?
There's no nudity or sex in this, but it feels just plain scuzzy and that's the kind of filth that I wallow in. The promise of a carnal inferno and the delivery of entropy, so to speak. Then again, you get a lot of dance scenes that were volcanic in 1963 and could play on prime time TV today.
Like how Andy Milligan really only wants family members to lose their minds and scream at one another while the horror elements are just window dressing, so many Joe Sarno movies are about sadness and how people fail to connect. At the end, Bobbi remarks just how old and tired she is, despite all the magic. We don't see her as younger - there's no money for special effects - and have to become part of her illusion, hypnotized ourselves with the black and white starkness.
Sarno took over when original director Anthony Farrar left. Sure, it drags despite being 66 minutes, but then you remember that this is a sexless sex movie that has become a voodoo noir and you figure, well, it's good enough.
One review on Letterboxd said, "The people are not very attractive nor appealing." Maybe you've never seen pre-1970s adult films before. For shame.
Amityville Bigfoot (2024)
Yes, I watched it
I have a list of Bigfoot movies on Letterboxd.
I also have an Amityville list.
This movie put chocolate in my peanut butter.
In the woods of Amityville, scientists whose lab once occupied the very space that the house on 112 Ocean Avenue sat have somehow captured Bigfoot, conducting a series of experiments on him. He escapes and runs wild in the woods, all while a film crew is shooting their own Bigfoot movie, local bird watchers seek an elusive species and protestors who want an end to Amityville movies all gather in one place to become victims.
This movie has almost everything that an Amityville movie should, which is a great name and a better poster, even if that looks like Kong exploding from the familiar windows of the De Feo home. It does not, however, have any taglines.
Directed by Shawn C. Phillips, who co-wrote it with Julie Anne Prescott and is on his ninth trip to Amityville, (he directed Amityville Shark House and Amityville Karen and acted in Amityville Webcam, Amityville Job Interview, Amityville Frankenstein, Amityville Thanksgiving, Amityville In the Hood and Amityville Hex) has put together yet another movie that has no ties to the original other than you've seen both movies.
He also plays Ian, the leader of the scientists who lose Bigfoot, leading one of them named Annie (Lauren Francesca, who was the Amityville Karen) to be assaulted by the creature, who she claims "Has the biggest dick I've ever had." The Amityville Bigfoot which acts a lot more like the sasquatch in Night of the Demon than a friendly skunk ape. Is there such a thing as an amiable abominable snowman?
As for that movie in the woods, its director Claude (Brandon Krum) is having issues with his producer father Harv (G. Larry Butler) and his main actress, Francesca (Ashleeann Cittell). And somehow, in the middle of all of this - Bigfoot sexual, fecal and urine assaults abound - Eric Roberts and Tuesday Knight appear. There's also a scene where Bigfoot pushes a baby carriage with a dog inside it down a hill and this is played for comedy.
This wouldn't be an Amityville movie without ten minutes at the end of videos sent in by people who paid to be in the movie, as well as news footage that pads out the running time. There's also lots of ad libbed dialogue, people talking on and on when they never would in real life and so much screaming. Yet it looks a lot better than most Amityville or Bigfoot movies, so I guess that's some faint praise.
Amityville Backpack (2024)
Backpack?!?
Luther Boots (Mike Hartsfield) goes to a yard sale, finds a backpack - that has killed a child with a stock video explosion and that means I had to send a message to Erica from Unsung Horrors and pass the curse of this on to her - and it starts to kill everyone that is close to him.
Evan Jacobs also made Amityville Death Toilet, so I guess I have to watch this.
Every SRS-released Amityville movie has characters that just talk about everything. They narrate every moment of their lives. No one I have ever met talks like this, but yet this happens in all of their movies. I realize that we need to explain what is happening, but when the talking takes up most of the movie and people are given to saying things like, "Backpack, I think you're going to help me a lot." I lose my mind by the time a film like this one is over.
What didn't help is that I usually watch Amityville movies all alone, but for some reason my wife came in and started watching this one and realized that she had made a mistake marrying me. She had so many questions about why I would spend so much time watching this and I was afraid to show her my Letterboxd list because I'm too old to start over again.
Anyways, what it does have going for it is shots inside the backpack, as well as the fact that the backpack looks just like the house on 112 Ocean Avenue. It also has the threat of a cat death - spoiler warning, it survives - and a lot of people killed by, yes, a backpack. Who knew that my old JanSport could have been so evil?
There were moments of this that were so uncolor balanced and the sun was bleeding into the image that I was shocked that it wasn't filmed by someone who had never seen a camera or a movie before. Then there would be a great shot or a cool slow motion push in to someone. I wonder, can you tell when one of these movies is a parody any more?
Now, to the tune of Stroke 9's "Little Black Backpack:"
Don't want to watch this,
You say why not?
Don't want to think about
Movies about this haunted town
There's totally no good reason
For my wife to care about
This little Amityville Backpack.
Cyberflic (1997)
Loved this
I approached this movie with a strange and melancholic blend of joy and sadness. Joy because it's everything I love about movies: Italian maniacs let loose in Miami making a movie that at once combines Lethal Weapon, Ghost Dad and Tron while being shot on film in the very late for the Italian exploitation film industry year of 1997. Even better, it has the high concept of combining Terence Hill and "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler as buddy cops.
The cheerlessness comes from the fact that this is at the end. This is the last movie that Antonio Margheriti (Anthony M. Dawson in America) would direct, the last that Bruno Corbucci would write and really the event horizon of an era of films that I love with all my heart.
Yet in this bubble of time, you still get Margheriti combining actual car chases with the practical miniature effects that you hope for in his movies. The explosions are as big as they can be. And sure, maybe Terence Hill is thinking about better days alongside Bud Spencer. Perhaps Marvin Hagler is probably remembering when he fought world middleweight champ Alan Minter, who said, "No black man is going to take my title." Then he hit him so many times so quickly that he opened four gigantic wounds on the champ's face and Hagler won his first title as the fans in Wembley Arena launched beer bottles his way. How did he end up here in Miami trying to tell jokes and being in his fourth movie for these wacky Italians?* And was Margheriti dreaming of filming cobwebbed staircases being navigated by a candelabra-wielding Barbara Steele?
No matter. Here they are in Miami and a movie needs to be made.
Skims (Hill) is an ex-cop turned computer salesman who comes back to Miami to see his old cop friend Mike Davis (Hagler). But we know why he's in town. He's undercover, investigating a microchip stealing plot. He's also excited to reconnect with former cop - and the widow of his partner - Chelo (Giselle Blondet) and bond with her tech-loving daughter Lily (Jennifer Martinez).
Our hero finally tracks down the villain behind all of the drama in this, a man named Abel Van Axel (Stephen Edward, who showed up in three episodes of Miami Vice), who goes by the even cooler - if unnecessary - name of Mr. X. What is he, the final boss of a Konami beat 'em up?
Despite being informed that Skims is the greatest cop of all time, he gets blown up real good and dies. We even see his funeral. I'm shocked they didn't run the credits.
Except that Skims has somehow survived and shows up on Lily's computer, looking like Trinity by way of Automan, fighting dinosaurs and transforming like he's fueled by Energon. His power set is beyond crazy here, even moreso than the goofball abilities Hill had in my beloved Super Fuzz. He can be invisible unless someone tells him they love him, he can travel through telephone lines and is now a hologram, which is explained as "the result of modern technology and Biblical faith."
Of course the bad guys pay and Skims carries around the bad guy's gun, turning it on him, and everyone is all smiles by the end. Even me, as I watch the credits and try not to think that it's over, it's over, all the rainbows in the sky start to weep, then say goodbye. Apologies to Roy Orbison, obviously.
The best thing in this whole movie is that Skims forgets that he's just been killed by techno gangsters and real estate lords and decides to screw around with his fellow cops while they're lifting weights, playing ghost reindeer games with them like he's Super Fuzz - "He's a super snooper. Really super trooper. A wonder cop a one like you never saw." - and I could watch a 90-minute movie of these antics.
You may ask, who else is in the cast? Well, who isn't? This is the last movie of Richard Liberty, who unites the decades of Romero films by playing Artie in The Crazies and Dr. Matt "Frankenstein" Logan in Day of the Dead. He plays Captain Holmes. The old lady who pulls out a gigantic handgun and fires it at criminals is Florance McGee, who was also a senior citizen in Super Fuzz and was Phoebe Russell in Empire of the Ants. Tommy Lane was a stuntman who was in Shaft and Ganja and Hess along with playing the trumpet and flugelhorn. Wikipedia thinks that he's the same Tommy Lane who was in the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs with Mike Davis. He wasn't.
There's also Roger Callard (Conan the Librarian from UHF), Edoardo Margheriti (who would go from doing effects on Yor Hunter from the Future to being a second unit director for Hudson Hawk) and a lot of folks who were in Florida-based productions such as Wild Things and B. L. Stryker.
Beyond Corbucci, this was written by Terence's son Jess and executive producer Ferdie Pacheco. It was the only movie that Ferdie ever wrote or produced. He was better known as the personal physician and cornerman for Muhammad Ali. He left Ali's team in 1977 when after Ali won against Earnie Shavers, he felt that the post-fight physical showed that the boxer was falling to pieces. In the book Muhammed Ali: His Life and Times, Pacheco said, "The New York State Athletic Commission gave me a report that showed Ali's kidneys were falling apart. I wrote to Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, his wife and Ali himself. I got nothing back in response. That's when I decided enough is enough." When they reunited in 2002 and Ali was suffering from Parkinson's, The Greatest told The Fight Doctor "You was right."
This also has one of my favorite things about Italian movies going for it: absolutely strange alternate titles. I get Virtual Weapon as it tells you that this is a Mel and Danny ripoff with a tech twist and the French title Cyberflic means Cybercop. But then the Japanese title is Point of Dead, which is a great title that says nothing. Germany got Zwei Fäuste für Miami (Two Fists for Miami), Hungary the very metal Én vagyok a fegyver (I Am the Gun) which spoils the ending of the movie and Italy had Potenza virtuale (Virtual Power).
I always worry that I am going to run out of Italian movies to obsess over but so far, I keep finding new things to write over a thousand words about.
*In case you wondered, Indio and Indio 2 for Margheriti, as well as Across Red Nights for Maurizio Bonuglia.
The Sintern (2024)
The Sintern!
I have to tell you, I drove my wife nuts by saying the name of this movie over and over again.
This starts with Monica (J. Roppolo Jacobs) trying to call her daughter Verity (Evelyn Giovine) - or V as everyone seems to call her - from a pay phone after she causes an incident at a mega church by calling Pastor Dean Humphries (Damon Dayoub) a "hypocritical *******." She barely gets a message sent before she's cut off, just as her daughter is in the midst of shaking down someone along with her boyfriend Sam (Greg Finley). As the man runs, Sam takes a shot at him and steals a car while a convenience store owner gets a clear view of both of their faces. V breaks up with him, something that seems to be a long time coming, and heads to The Devil's Dive, a bar where her foster sister Ruby (Raquel Davies) works.
After doing some research into where her mother was - yes, there are still payphones, as her sister reminds her - she is contacted by Detective Peter Frederick (Daniel Link). They've found her mother's body and she has to identify her. We soon discover that Peter might be V's father and he definitely wants to discuss her relationship with Sam, the money they owe to drug dealer Ricky and the beating of the man the other night. She runs and decides that there's no way the police can handle this investigation, so she has to infiltrate the church where her mother died.
To do that, she has to become The Sintern.
After meeting the Pastor and his wife Heidi (Stefanie Estes), V renames herself Chastity and becomes part of the marketing team for the church. Despite being on the bad side of longtime parishioner Louann (Judy Kain), she wins over everyone, including the social media officer Kayle (Phuong Kubacki) - the brownies help - and singer Gage (Samuel Larsen), who leads the church's choir in worship. V - or Chastity, as she's now called - now understands the sin of illicit thoughts every time she sees Gage make an altar call.
Of course Chastity is able to figure out exactly who killed her mother, get the boy to fall in love with her and get away from her criminally minded ex-boyfriend. She also gets to bond with her foster sister all over again, who conveniently is going to college for marketing. As I was watching this while doing my day job in advertising, I just kept yelling at the TV (when I wasn't making up songs about The Sintern).
Directed by Julie Herlocker (who was a producer on Millennium and Grimm) and written by Jeff Dickamore and Aurora Florence, this presents a level-headed look at a church - despite the murder and sexual mania of its leaders, the followers are there for good reasons - and has a heroine who moves past her upbringing to become a capable heroine willing to do nearly anything to expose the truth. Also, as I love exploitation, bonus points for - spoiler warning - Pastor father nearly assaulting her, followed by her puking up her guts when she realized that any daddy issues that she had in the past are about to be multiplied beyond belief. Double word score - or whatever - for the fact that Pastor Peter doesn't really know much of the Bible and seems to make things up, which others call out and which confuses our heroine, who doesn't know much of the Psalms.
On a final note, I always get weirded out when religious people drop the name and location of their Bible quote. Like, you'd say, "You have turned for me my mourning into dancing; you have loosed my sackcloth and clothed me with gladness." And then follow it with Psalm 30:11. You don't see me closing my movie quotes with where they appeared, like "You wanted to kill me! What are you gonna do now, huh? Now death is coming for you! You wanted to kill Helena Markos! Hell is behind that door! You're going to meet death now... the LIVING DEAD!" Suspiria, an hour and five minutes in.
I should totally start doing that.
Calamity Jane (2024)
Calamity Jane
My wife asking me during this movie, "Did cowboys really swear so much?" I figured this movie was just following the lead of Deadwood, but I decided to do some research. According to Notes from the Frontier, they both did and didn't. Jesse Sheidlower, the American editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and the book The F-Word says, "There were cursing contests when cowboys would get together and insult each other. Evidence that we have is that they were using more religious blasphemy than the sexual insults which are popular today." That's because using the f-word didn't come into use in the U. S. until after World War I. That said, the same article says that Stagecoach Mary, Belle Starr - and this film's star! - Calamity Jane all were historically known to use tons of profanity.
Directed by Terry Miles (Even Lambs Have Teeth) and written by Leon Langford and Collin Watts, this is the story of - you guessed it from the title - Calamity Jane (Emily Bett Rickards, Felicity from Arrow) getting revenge on the man who killed her soon-to-be husband, Wild Bill (Stephen Amell, who was Green Arrow on Arrow and the lead in Heels).
Most of what we know about Calamity Jane - born Martha Jane Canary - comes from an autobiographical pamphlet that she dictated and sold as part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. As you can imagine, a lot of the story in that pamphlet is exaggerated. She claims that her name came from a battle with Native Americans: "When fired upon, Capt. Egan was shot. I was riding in advance and on hearing the firing turned in my saddle and saw the Captain reeling in his saddle as though about to fall. I turned my horse and galloped back with all haste to his side and got there in time to catch him as he was falling. I lifted him onto my horse in front of me and succeeded in getting him safely to the Fort. Capt. Egan, on recovering, laughingly said: "I name you Calamity Jane, the heroine of the plains." I have borne that name up to the present time."
Then again, another story of her life - not written by her - said, "She never saw a lynching and never was in an Indian fight. She was simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish, but possessed a generous streak which made her popular."
How realistic is this film's claim that Wild Bill was married to her?
On September 6, 1941, the U. S. Department of Public Welfare granted old age assistance to a Jean Hickok Burkhardt McCormick. Jean claimed to be the daughter of Martha Jane Canary and James Butler Hickok and had evidence that they were married at Benson's Landing, Montana on September 25, 1873. She also had a letter from Jane that said that she had been married to Hickok and that he was het birth father. She was then placed for adoption with a Captain Jim O'Neil and his wife.
When she died - of alcoholism - according to Michael Griske's The Diaries of John Hunton: Made to Last, Written to Last: Sagas of the Western Frontier, "Four of the men who planned her funeral later stated that Hickok had "absolutely no use" for Jane while he was alive, so they decided to play a posthumous joke on him by burying her by his side."
The truth is always difficult to divine.
Let's talk about the movie.
When Jane and Bill make it to Deadwood, they finally decide to walk the aisle. Except that he can't leave behind the chance to play cards and that ends with Jack McCall (Primo Allon) killing him. As you can imagine, McCall gets out of town before Jane can catch him after she easily escapes from the jail of Sheriff Mason (Tim Rozen).
Mason starts a posse to hunt down both Jane and McCall, as well as a criminal that Jane was in jail with - and who started the riot that got her out - by the name of Abigail (Priscilla Faia) starts to stalk her.
If you're an Arrow fan, this mini-reunion doesn't last long. So you may be let down. This also feels like way more talking than action, but the fight between Jane and Abigail is pretty great. I also liked the undertaker character who gets Jane through the Badlands, even if he's barely in this. But hey - I'm all for new Westerns getting made.
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
Like a bar band
When The Strangers came out in 2008, it had mixed reviews, which didn't matter. It became a cult film. It has characters that have such a good look to them and the end of the film, where Dollface explains it all by telling the couple that they were attacked "Because you were home," which was enough in the quality starved mid 2000s. The sequel, The Strangers: Prey at Night, changes influences from the 1970s to the 1980s. While it also has its audience, it's really twenty good minutes looking for a movie to be part of.
Imagine how surprised I was when Lionsgate announced that director Renny Harlin and writers Alan R. Cohen and Alan Freedland would be making three new films in this series, all in a row, all shot in Slovakia. Is this the 2000s all over again?
Intellectual property is insidious. Sure, we love seeing sequels of the films that we love. But when an IP is a success, we can be sure that we'll see numerous remakes and reimaginings of every horror property there is -- except for Friday the 13th, right? -- again and again.
Where this movie changes the game -- slightly, ever so slightly -- is by having its leads Maya (Madelaine Petsch) and Ryan (Froy Gutierrez) traveling across the country and being forced to stay overnight in Venus, Oregon, as opposed to visiting their summer home in the midst of a relationship crisis.
Harlin has stated that this trilogy was intended to be neither a remake nor reboot. He was also aiming to get the tone close to the first movie, despite plans to explore who the killers are and where they come from. This suggests to me that what made the original so great -- there's no motivation for the killers other than they need something to do -- is similar to why Halloween remains the best film in that series. It's all about keeping things simple as well as scary.
Producer Mark Canton also says that these three movies are all about introuducing audiences to the world of The Strangers and that they want to expand that world Also, these movies take place in the same universe as the original two films. Harlin also told ComicBook.com, "We, of course, shot them on top of each other and mixed up, like movies are always made. But we had to keep in mind that this is one story arc. It is one 4.5 hour movie, and the first movie is a first act. It sets up the characters and the terror and the Killers and our main character, who will survive the first movie, but then go on a journey for the next two." The thought is that these movies will show four days in the life of Maya.
The problem with shooting three movies at the same time is that the first movie better knock you out. And this, well...remember when Gus Van Zant remade Psycho and people wondered why it was shot for shot? At least that was a classic film that had several decades in between. This just feels like watching a fan film of the original. Sure, it looks great, but it's missing the menace that the first take had, the moments of looking out into nothingness, wondering what is out there waiting. That's one of the most terrifying things in real life and The Strangers captured it flawlessly.
None of the masked characters are actors from the other films. The Man In the Mask is now called Scarecrow and he's played by Matus Lajcak while Dollface is Olivia Kreutzova and Pin-Up Girl is Letizia Fabbri.
It took Michael Myers six movies to find the Thorn Cult and Jason ten movies to go to space. Who knows where these films are going to go? Will we see other people make their own karaoke versions of mid-level slashers? Will I be enraged when Zack Snyder remakes The Prowler and Michael Bay shows us his vision of The Being? But we all lived through the Platinum Dunes era, when the films we once loved were strip mined and made into barely recognizable films with pretty kids getting killed by CGI versions of the murderers we once cheered for.
I am reminded that Harlin also made A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Exorcist: The Beginning. Then again, he did make Deep Blue Sea, the movie that taught me that LL Cool J's head is like a shark fin. Maybe I should be patient and see where he goes with this. But man, how many chances has this guy got? For every The Long Kiss Goodnight there's Cutthroat Island, but then again, he also made Prison, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane and Die Hard 2. I feel too old and too limited in the time that I watch movies -- yes, I know, I watch like four a day -- to sit through three of these movies only to say, "Eh." Maybe I want too much, you know?
At least the Spirit Store will have official masks for all the Hot Topic kids to wear this Halloween.
Eh, that feels like I'm being a gatekeeper. Perhaps this will lead people to discovering better movies.
Now I'm being too much of an optimist.
Tales from the Crypt: Spoiled (1991)
Cable
In the world of E. C. Comics, there is no shortage of cheating spouses or the price they pay for giving into sin.
"Hello, golfing fiends, and welcome to the Crypt. Oh, don't mind him. That's just my caddie, Juan. He got me teed off while I was playing a round...so I shot a hole in Juan! Which brings to mind the young woman in tonight's tale. She's also playing around, except that her game isn't golf. It's love. I call this disgusting drama "Spoiled.""
This episode is so meta that there's an argument for buying cable in it. "The picture is so much better. Plus, you get HBO and everything. It would really improve the quality of your life," says Louise (Annabelle Gurwitch) to her put-upon friend, soap opera obsessive Janet (Faye Grant). And once our heroine actually does get the cable, her husband Leon (Alan Rachins) demands that she turn off the Crypt Keeper!
Janet loves Fuchsia (Anita Morris), the star of her favorite daytime show There's Always Tomorrow. When Fuschia's husband ignores her, she gets the passion she needs from younger and way more desirable men. So you can understand when cable guy Abel (Anthony LaPaglia) comes into her home that she wants nothing more to pound his brains out while all her mad scientist hubby cares about is taking brains and moving them from body to body.
Well, not exactly. He actually switches the heads on the bodies and by the end of this story, he's done that to Janet and Abel with some of the worst effects that 1991 can deliver.
Directed by Andy Wolk, who has mostly been in episodic television, and written by Connie Johnson (who assisted producers on this show for 17 episodes) and Doug Ronning (who also wrote another episode, "The Secret"), this is what happens when this show tries to be too cute. Sure, humor is part of E. C. but it's not all of it. It's why I prefer the Amicus version to so many of the HBO episodes.
Grant and Rachins would play another married couple - and the parents to Brian Austin Green - in the TV movie Unwed Father.
This is based on "Spoiled" from The Haunt of Fear #26. It was written by Otto Binder (who wrote more than half of the Captain Marvel family stories and created Supergirl) and drawn by Jack Kamen.
Linda (1973)
Made for TV giallo-esque
John D. MacDonald had several of his books turned into movies. The Executioners was filmed twice as Cape Fear, Soft Touch inspired Man-Trap, plus the novels Darker Than Amber, The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything, Condominium and A Flash of Green were all made into movies. Even this story was turned into two TV movies with the second starring Virginia Madsen as Linda.
Linda Reston (Stella Stevens) has a bad marriage with Paul (Ed Nelson, The Devil's Partner), who is daydreaming of leaving her when she suddenly shoots their friend Anne Braden (Mary-Robin Redd) and turns the gun on Anne's husband Jeff (John Saxon!) while at the beach. Paul calls the cops and when they arrive, Jeff is alive and the twosome accuses Paul of killing Anne.
As you can tell right away, Linda and Jeff are working together to get rid of their spouses and make a new life for themselves. Luckily, Marshall Journeyman (John McIntire, who replaced both Ward Bond on Wagon Train and Charles Bickford on The Virginian when both of those actors died), an elder lawyer, takes on his case and starts to investigate Linda and Jeff.
Paul sneaks out of his cell and soon learns that his wife has been conspiring with Jeff, which leads Journeyman to get the cops in on a scam to call her and try and get a confession. She's too tough but man, Jeff folds right away. She tells him he's spineless and also informs her now ex-husband that she won't be in jail long.
Originally broadcast as the ABC Saturday Suspense Movie on November 3, 1973, this was directed by Jack Smight, who made one of my wife's favorite movies, No Way to Treat a Lady, as well as Airport 1975, The Illustrated Man, The Traveling Executioner, Number One with a Bullet and Damnation Alley.
Stella Stevens is quite wonderful in this. She's so cold and has everything figured out but yet as she laments, she's never been able to find a man who isn't spineless. Her husband can't even bury a dead animal without having a nervous breakdown and her lover gets her arrested for murder. I'd love a sequel where we learn how she takes over prison.
Felicity (1978)
What they call Emanuelle in Australia
John D. Lamond worked in promotion before directing his first two movies, Australia After Dark and The ABC of Love and Sex. These mondo films were both successes which led to him making his first narrative film, which is Felicity. He also wrote Sky Pirates and directed the slasher Nightmares.
For this one, he was inspired by Just Jaeckin's Emmanuelle to the point that the book gets references multiple times and there's even a similar wicker chair. He said, "The French have always been able to make their films NOT be pornographic, they'd be erotic. They were classy - the most they could ever say was softcore. And the way they did it, they made pretty images that looked like a Singapore Airlines TV commercial, they had nice fashion, good photography and nice music. And that way it dresses it up and makes it all chocolate boxy... I thought okay, the way to do that on a film budget is to go somewhere exotic. Make sure the people are pretty and they don't have pimples. Don't be sordid in any way, have pretty music and exotic locations, nice lighting and nice fashion. So even though it was a tiny film, we came up to Hong Kong and we got all the clothes tailor made for them, so that they fitted properly."
Felicity Robinson (Glory Annen, Prey, The Lonely Lady) has spent most of her life in boarding school, forever dreaming of the kind of true love - and plenty of lust - she has read about. Well, she mostly reads Emmanuelle and The Story of O (you can even see Udo Keir and Corinne Clery on the cover). She also occasionally has sapphic interludes with her Willows End Ladies College classmate Jenny (Jody Hanson) that mean more to Jenny than Felicity.
Then, her father arranges a trip to Hong Kong to visit his friends Christine (Marilyn Rodgers, Patrick) and Stephen (Gordon Charles). As soon as she gets there, Felicity spies on the two as they make love. Christine realizes this and decides to introduce Felicity to the ways of love, first having her be deflowered by the much older Andrew (David Bradshaw) and then the exotic Me Ling (Joni Flynn, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Octopussy), who takes her on a journey through the erotic world of the East. But ah, Felicity remains traditional and eventually falls in love with a nice young boy named Miles (Chris Milne, Thirst).
There's even a scene where the characters go to see The ABC of Love and Sex, which Lamond said was a "total Roger Corman." He also intended to make a sequel, Felicity in the Garden of Pleasures, that the government organization known as the South Australian Film Corporation would invest in. Controversy resulted and the movie was never made.
Felicity's voice - and the reason this might feel so charming instead of lecherous - belong to Diane Lamond, the director's wife. They pull another Emmanuelle move by claiming that the story was written by Felicity Robinson.
Sadly, Glory Annen's went through some dark times in her life. She was the partner of racehorse owner Ivan Allan for more than a decade and when the relationship ended, both she and her mother were evicted from their home. This led to a major British court case which "established that parties to ancillary relief court proceedings may generally expect the information they have provided about their finances to remain confidential and protected from publication."
After Annen died in 2017, several documents she wrote regarding her relationship have been released and are currently being used to create an expose of Allan, the British legal system and the criminal elements in the world of horse racing. Her last role was in Lamond's True Flies.
I had so much fun watching this movie. I'm certain I watched it furtively on Cinemax After Dark along with stand outs such as Eleven Days, Eleven Nights; Emanuelle in Bangkok; Gwendoline; The Secrets of Love: Three Rakish Tales and Young Lady Chatterley II. These movies seemed so naughty then - well, Joe D'Amato's work still is sleazetastic - and watching this today, I felt the same way that people that once got arrested for watching nudie cuties must have felt as hardcore started playing legally.
Angels' Brigade (1979)
Angels
Directed by Greydon Clark, a lot of critics made fun of this movie for ripping off Charlie's Angels. But you know, that's exploitation. This time, you get seven girls - policewoman Elaine Brenner (Robin Greer, Satan's Cheerleaders), high school teacher April Thomas (Jacqulin Cole, Clark's wife), martial artist Kako Umaro (Lieu Chinh), stuntwoman Terry Grant (Sylvia Anderson, Record City, Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway), model Maria (Noela Velasco), Vegas singer Michelle Wilson (Susan Kiger, who was in Seven, Death Screams, Galaxina and H. O. T. S. as well as being the January 1977 Playboy Playmate of the Month) and Trish (Liza Greer, Robin's sister) - going up against drug dealers that have put Michelle's brother Bobby (Mike Gugliotta) in the hospital.
Yet this movie never feel seedy and the ladies all have their own jobs and independent lives instead of just being giggle. Yes, they are gorgeous. But they're also pretty intelligent and drive a great 70s van. It's nearly a cartoon, as the seven women all get special costumes and even the transition between screens is closer to Wonder Woman than Charlie's Angels.
The bad guys include future Andy Sidaris leading man Darby Hinton, Jack Palance and Peter Lawford. Yes, that's star power. And there's even more, as Jim Backus (as a right wing militia leader!) and Alan Hale Jr. (as Michelle's manager) somehow get off the island and appear in this. Perhaps the wildest casting is Arthur Godfrey as himself. At one point, he was heard on radio and seen on television six days a week with nine different CBS shows. Yet the end of his popularity came when he publicly fired singer Julius La Rosa on his radio show before going on a spree and letting more than twenty employees go in the next few years and the public began to see through his public image. But here he is in a low budget Greydon Clark movie. And I nearly missed Pat Buttram!
Best of all, the The Angels get a Charlie and it's Neville Brand. Did I cast this movie?
It looks way better than it should - it's an early Dean Cundy-shot effort - and as for that van, well, Darby Hinton bought it when they were done with the movie and put a hot tub in it. I bet his mustache got one heck of a workout.
Clark would work with Palance later in one of my favorites of his films, Without Warning. This is also one of four movies Jack would make with his son Cody. The others are God's Gun, Young Guns and Treasure Island.
A lot of reviews get upset that this was so cartoony and had a PG rating. Then, they make fun of the acting. Have they ever watched a drive-in movie before?
Gli incubi di Dario Argento (1987)
Worth watching for Argento fans
Gli incubi di Dario Argento (Dario Argento's Nightmares) was a TV series created and directed by Dario Argento that was part of the RAI TV show Giallo by Enzo Tortora. He's probably most famous for the show Portabello that had viewers call in to buy or sell things, present ideas or try and look for love. And if they could get the parrot who was the show's namesake to say his name, they would win a prize. He was also arrested in 1983 and jailed for 7 months as it was thought he was a member of an organized crime family, the Nuova Camorra Organizzata. It was a case of mistaken identity and he got out of ten years in jail thanks to the Radical Party. They offered him a candidacy to the European Parliament, which he won in a landslide. He was cleared of all charges the year this show ran and brought this show - on which he discussed unsolved murder cases - and Portabella to RAI.
The main draw of these episodes are nine new mini-movies made by Argento. They're three-minute shorts shot on 35mm that show off some wild effects but one of them, Nostalgia Punk, so upset viewers that it has rarely been shown since. The stories are:
La finestra sul cortile (The Window on the Court): This is Argento's tribute to Alfred Hitchcock and Rear Window. After watching the film, a man named Massimo watches his neighbors fight. He runs down with a knife to stop them, but falls on his own weapon and is blamed by the police for killing the woman. If you recognize the music, it's part of the Simon Boswell score from Phenomena.
Riti notturni (Night Rituals): This is also missing from some online versions of the film, but has a maid conspire with a voodoo coven to murder and devour the couple that she works for.
Il Verme (The Worm): A woman who goes by the name of Bettina is reading Dylan Dog (the comic book that Cemetery Man comes from) when she overhears a story about parasites that go from cats to humans. As she explores her nearly nude body in a mirror, she notices a worm has grown out of her eye, which she stabs out.
Amare e morire (Loving and Dying): Set to Michael Jackson's "Bad," this story has Gloria assaulted and left for dead. As she recovers, she believes that the man who raped her is one of three neighbors. She sleeps with each in an attempt to learn who it is and get her bloody revenge.
Nostalgia punk: The most controversial segment, this has a woman's water become poisoned. She begins to vomit multicolored liquids and then parts of her body before she finally tears her own body to pieces and her organs rain out of her destroyed carcass. It got so many complaints that Argento was told to settle down in future segments.
La Strega (The witch): Using Morricone's score from The Bird With the Crystal Plumage, this has Cinzia's party guests playing a game called "The Witch" that ends with children screaming and holding a bloody head.
Addormentarsi (Falling asleep): A man is possessed by a demon just before he falls asleep and then devours his dog. This uses "Anarchy in the UK" by the Sex Pistols.
Sammy: Sammy is a young girl who is frightened when Santa enters her room. Then Santa removes his face and reveals a monster. It's simple but it really works.
L'incubo di chi voleva interpretare l'incubo di Dario Argento (The Nightmare of the One Who Wished to Explain Dario Argento's Nightmare): A young man comes to REI to be part of this series and when he stays at a hotel, he soon learns he's in a room with foreigners who steal everything he has and then threaten to kill him. It turns out that it's all a set-up by Argento.
At the beginning of every episode, Argento appears, often with Coralina Cataldi-Tassoni (Demons 2, Il Bosco 1, Opera) all gothed out and acting as his starry-eyed assistant.
Argento also created another segment for Giallo, Turno di notte (Night Shift), which was about what happens to cab drivers at night. Episodes were also directed by Lamberto Bava and Luigi Cozzi. He also shared how he filmed several big moments in his most famous movies, such as the Loma camera sequence in Tenebrae; the bird attack in Opera, the transformation scenes in Demons 2 and how he directed Goblin to create the score for Suspiria. These scenes are worth watching and also appear in the Luigi Cozzi-directed Dario Argento: Master of Horror.
While this is by no means necessary watching for those with a passing interest in Italian horror, for devotees of the form and Argento, it is required viewing. It's the chance to basically get nine new stories even if they are very short.
TMZ NO BS: Conor McGregor (2023)
MMA
Directed by David Thies (Prince Fatal Secrets, TMZ No BS: Cardi B), this TMZ No BS installment is all about former Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Featherweight and Lightweight Champion - the first UFC fighter to hold UFC championships in two weight classes simultaneously - Conor McGregor. He's the biggest PPV draw in MMA history but his career hasn't been without controversy, which is where TMZ comes in.
Born in Dublin, McGregor started boxing to defend himself from bullies and then started training for MMA when he met Tom Egan. He debuted in February 2007 for the Irish Ring of Truth promotion, beating Kieran Campbell by TKO. By 2013, he was signed to UFC. Two years later, he defeated Chad Mendes for the UFC Featherweight Championship at UFC 183 - and he came to the ring with Sinead O'Connor singing him out - and then defeated injured champion Jose Aldo in 13 seconds - the fastest knock out in UFC history - to prove he deserved the belt.
He lost his first match at UFC 196 to Nate Diaz but defeated him in a rematch at UFC 200 and he would beat Eddie Alvarez for the UFC Lightweight Championship at UFC 205.
After taking most of 2017 off for the birth of his son, he crossed over to boxing and lost to Floyd Mayweather Jr. In the 10th round of his first pro fight. Despite two losses to knock out and saying he would retire several times, McGregor is due to fight Michael Chandler at UFC 303.
But the controversies! Like going wild in the cage on a show he wasn't on, Bellator 187, not to mention throwing things at a bus Khabib Nurmagomedov was riding in before UFC 223 and a fight with Nurmagomedov at UFC 229. He's also attacked people in pubs, allegedly punched Italian musician Francesco Facchinetti, been investigated for sexual assault and even knocked out the Miami Heat's mascot Burnie.
Between all that - and the new Roadhouse - TMZ certainly has a lot of ammo to deliver on McGregor and an entire hour to do it. Here's hoping he doesn't track down Harvey Levin and throw a beating on him.
Furia asesina (1990)
Furia asesina
Furia Aesina (1990)
Posted on June 10, 2024 by bandsaboutmovies
June 10: Junesploitation's topic of the day - as suggested by F This Movie- is Sharksploitation! We're excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what's next.
Of all the movies that came in the wake of Jaws, I may be most fascinated by Tintorera...Tiger Shark. Based on the book by oceanographer Ramón Bravo (who discovered the sleeping sharks of Isla Mujeres and is also the underwater zombie in Lucio Fulci's Zombi), it's as much a shark film as its a softcore movie concerning the three-way relationship between its heroes. It's also the only shark movie I've seen with full frontal male nudity.
Made 13 years after he made Tintorera, this is directed by René Cardona Jr. Mostly, it's about ecological-minded scientists devoted to solving the riddle of AIDS by studying sharks and taking their antibodies. As you can imagine, this makes the sharks more murderous, if that's possible. The film follows one of them and it beeps repeatedly, every time the camera gets close to it, as the Jaws theme plays. I don't even think Joe D'Amato or Bruno Mattei had balls big enough - cojones maybe - to do that.
There's also a BDSM serial killer on the loose, taking one of the scientists and tying her up. All with a Casio demo track synth soundtrack, filled with spandex and butt shots, shot on video and a release straight to home video. Also, Gerardo Zepeda, who plays Pariente in this, had quite the career, appearing in everything from El Topo to Sorceress, Dr. Tarr's Horror Dungeon, Caveman, as the monster in Night of the Bloody Apes and as the Cyclops in Santo and Blue Demon vs. The Monsters.
It's not as good as the original, but the fact that it exists and that I found means so much to me.
What Happens in Miami (2024)
What Happens In Miami
After a spring break vacation to Miami, three friends -- Maika (Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut), Taylor (Rachel Leyco) and Shay (Jada Elena Wooten) are blamed when the fourth member of their squad, Autumn (Annalisa Cochrane) goes missing. As she is a social media influencer, the story becomes picked up by the media and it puts the girls even more in the spotlight.
As told through flashbacks, we learn that at one point, Autumn was the girl who pushed the others to be wilder and go after the boys and girls they were interested in. But as the story unfolds, we soon discover that perhaps she wasn't the best friend to everyone. Meanwhile, Maika's father Zion (Derek Roberts) tries to coach the girls through what they should say to the police, triggering Shay as she remembers Autumn doing her makeup and revealing that she knows that she has a drug addiction.
Autumn also has a new guy by the name of Cameron (Christopher Collins) and his OCD is so bad that he does everything in three, keeps all of his clothes and records footage of his house that he watches over and over. He's also a drug dealer and treats them to hard seltzer and cocaine. He also tells Detective McAvoy (Lauren O'Quinn) later that he thinks that before she disappeared, Autumn had a fight with Maika.
That's when Maika gets a text from someone named "I Know Who Killed Me" saying that she knows what she did. Whoever it is, it also posts a photo of her and Julian (Zachary S. Williams) to make her look bad and anger her boyfriend Brandon (Phillip Patrick Wright). Taylor thinks that Cameron is the one behind the account.
Autumn is always getting into other people's faces, as well as using her friend's issues against them and going after the boys that they're interested in. But they've all known one another forever and generally, you stay friends with people like this, at least in high school.
But then they find Autumn's body and Cameron flips out, thinking that he's going to jail. This brings up the past again, as Autumn posts a photo of Maika and Julian as he tries to kiss her. Back to our time and "I Know Who Killed Me" is accusing everyone of the murder. It all leads to the girls using the media to try and clear their names.
Directed by Tim Cruz (The Final Rose) and written by Jackie Logsted (Deadly Secrets of a Cam Girl, Rush for Your Life), this has two major twists left that change the entire story. That said, you're going to have to watch it yourself to see what happens next. This another example of Tubi originals getting better and having stories that make you stick with them.
Dr. Cook's Garden (1971)
Decent TV movie
Originally a play by Ira Levin - A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary's Baby, Deathtrap, The Stepford Wives, The Boys from Brazil and Sliver to name a few - this is only the second dramatic role for star Bing Crosby, who took over the part that Burl Ives played on Broadway, Dr. Leonard Cook.
He's the center of Greenfield, Vermont, responsible for the fact that there is hardly any crime and so much happiness. The man who is like a father to, Jimmy Tennyson( Jimmy Converse), comes back home and wants to be a doctor as well, but Cook is against it. This is his town.
Cook's assistant Dora Ludlow (Abby Lewis) tells Tennyson to keep working on the older man, who has heart problems, as he needs an assistant. The young doctor also glows close to a former love, Janey Rausch (Blythe Danner). He soon figures out that all of the deaths in town are Dr. Cook pruning his garden of those who aren't morally right for his small bit of heaven.
Originally airing on January 19, 1971 on ABC, this was directed by Ted Post, who we all know made The Baby and Beneath the Planet of the Apes. Writer Art Wallace worked on the Planet of the Apes TV series, as well as She Waits and being one of the creators of Dark Shadows. This is a really effective - and quick - movie. You'll see the twist coming, but the end is so moving and Crosby is so good in this role, you'll be along for every step of the ride.
Karate baka ichidai (1977)
So much goodness
Karate for Life (Karate Baka Ichidai which means A Karate Crazy Life) is the third and final movie in Sonny Chiba and director Kazuhiko Yamaguchi's series of movies about Kyokushin Karate master Mas Oyama. They're based on the Karate Baka Ichidai manga that was drawn by Jiro Tsunoda and Joya Kagemaru and written by Ikki Kajiwara. That comic book and the anime led to a karate boom in Japan and the artwork inspired the Street Fighter series and definitely is why you fight a bull in Karate Champ.
Chiba plays Oyama in all three movies and he has the belief that his martial arts is better than what he calls "dance" kung fu. There are some wild ways the movies prove this, as Chiba battles a bull in Kenka Karate Kyokushinken, which means Fighting Karate Kyokushin Fist. It was released in English speaking countries as Champion of Death and Karate Bullfighter. Not to be outdone, the sequel - Kenka Karate Kyokushin Burai Ken which means Fighting Karate-Brutal Ultimate Truth Fist - has Oyama literally battle a bear. Or a man in a bear costume, but what did you expect? That's why it's called Karate Bearfighter here.
Chiba actually studied for several years under Oyama - who has a cameo in the second movie - and achieved the rank of 4th Dan in the style. You can see his love for his master and the art in this movie, which mythologizes the abilities of Kyokushin Karate to somehow even more superhuman levels than the first two movies, minus the animal versus human battles.
This film is bookended by Oyama battling a karate school that he believes is inferior. He enters the school at the start of the film and battles nearly a hundred of their students, decimating them, before they cover the floor with oil to ruin his balance. It barely matters as he destroys even more of them and then plucks the eye out of the sensei, who follows him for the entire movie, waiting to attack, before Oyama fights him in a hall of mirrors as if this were a Japanese by way of Korean hero Enter the Dragon and climaxes with Oyama launching that man off a cliff.
In between, looking to make money to help street children, Oyama becomes involved with pro wrestling, which is used to entertain U. S. troops occupying post-war Japan. Despite giving up plenty of size, Oyama again obliterates everyone he faces and refuses to throw matches for the Yakuza organized crime figures that run it all. However, after he saves the life of a prostitute named Reiko (Yoko Natsuki) who is planning to kill herself after being assaulted by soldiers. Needing money to save a friend after they become sick, he finds himself coming back to wrestling but now he's in death matches - ala the Tiger Mask manga and anime - that are real battles to one person being killed. Of course, as you expect, he absolutely crushes everyone.
There's a lot to love here, from a hero that says, "Justice without power is nothing. Power without justice is just violence" which is kind of like Chiba renaming himself JJ Sonny Chiba and the JJ was for Japan Justice to pro wrestling scenes that have the names of each hold dynamically appearing on screen as if they were Shaw Brothers secret techniques, I was on the edge of my seat throughout.
Speaking of pro wrestling, this has Mr. Chin in the cast. According to a biography I found online, Mr. Chin was born Yuichi Deguchi and was a judo style martial artist who started his working life in the Hyogo prefecture's riot police unit before becoming part of the "Pro Judo" International Judo Association that was founded by Tatsukuma Ushijima as a way for judo fighters to make money putting on bouts and touring before the rise of Rikidozan's JWA.
After that, Deguchi joined the All Japan Pro Wrestling Association, an Osaka-based promotion that was the first to air pro wrestling on Japanese television. Mostly American soldiers were used as heels other than a man named P. Y. Chong, AKA Harold Watanabe, AKA Memphis legend Tojo Yamamoto (which makes sense to me finally as to how Phil Hickerson got his Asian name latter in his career, Py Chu Hi).
After being part of JWA's interpromotional Japan Championship Series in October of 1956, Deguchi joined Osaka locals Michiaki "Fireball Kid" Yoshimura, future famous All Japan Pro Wrestling referee Kanji "Joe" Higuchi and Hideyuki Nagasawa in joining the JWA. He became Mr. Chin and dressed in Chinese clothes and became one of the first wrestlers to use the poison mist as well as being one of the first native heels.
Chin feuded with Giant Baba, who took him out of wrestling for two months with one of his big boot kicks. After time in the hospital and encouragement from the nurse who would become his wife, Mr. Chin returned and in one match bit Baba in the chest, giving him a scar that he would carry throughout his career.
After stomach issues, Deguchi did some acting and came back in 1970 for IWE. He traveled to the U. S. for several years on an excursion, reforming his team with Yamamoto and using the name Mr. Kamikaze. He returned in 1976 as a gaijin heel by the name of Mr. Yoto and would later become part of the Independent Gurentai Army with Goro Tsurumi and Katzuso Ooiyama as their managing, taking back his Mr. Chin name. Just before IWE went out of business, he would lose to Hiromichi "Samson" Fuyuki by DQ on the final show at a playground.
As for the IWA, when they went out of business, Masao Inoue, Ashura Hara, Tsurumi and Fuyuki would join AJPW and their biggest star Rusher Kimura would take Isamu Teranishi and Animal Hamaguchi with him to New Japan Pro Wrestling for the first invasion angle in Japanese wrestling history, one that would later inspire the battles with UWFI and the NWO. Meanwhile, IWE founder Isao Yoshihara would become one of NJPW's bookers. As for Goro Tsurumi, he would run a local indy by the name of IWA Kakuto Shijuku, in which he was the only star and battle masked locals and other indy journeymen like Shoji Nakamaki and Yukihide Ueno.
But what about Mr. Chin? After IWE went out of business, he worked all over the world - even the Middle East - he would eventually debut for Frontier Martial Arts Pro Wrestling at the age of sixty in 1993. He was a comedy match character who would open shows, often wrestling young trainees like future ECW star Masato Tanaka. He also feuded with GOSAKU (who I once wrestled in WMF when he used the name Biomonster DNA) who was using the gimmick name of Undertaker Gosaku and Mr. Chin was Jinsei Chinzaki, taking off from Jinsei "Hakushi" Shinzaki. Sadly, Yuichi Deguchi died of chornic renal failure - after a life dealing with diabetes - in 1995.
Speaking of Japanese actors who would be famous and yet unknown to American audiences, Toshiyuki Tsuchiyama is in this. He's better known for the mecha suit he wore as Johnny Sokko.
There was a two-part remake of this film, Shin Karate Baka Ichidai: Kakutosha, directed by Takeshi Miyasaka and released in 2003 and 2004. The second film has pro wrestlers Keiji Mutoh, Masakatsu Funaki and kickboxer and former K-1 referee Nobuaki Kakuda in it.
Super Legend God Hikoza (2022)
Fun!
If you liked Monster Seafood Wars, director Minoru Kawasaki (Executive Koala, Earth Defense Widow, The Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit) is back with another kaiju movie, this time with a mecha that is created by scientists Tadao and Takaho to battle a gigantic sturgeon.
Also, if that sentence made you laugh, you will like this.
Many years ago, the human race worked with the Godness aliens to create Super Legend God Hikoza and defeat Shachihokon. But now the alien monster has escaped his prison and possesses a salary man to get his revenge on humanity.
UISAS (Ultra Institute Space and Astronaut Science) find a small doll that allows them to change places - like Marvel's Captain Marvel - with Super Legend God Hikoza when needed. The team must learn to work as one and find the arms and legs of the giant robot to save everything.
I kind of love that in order to appeal to the people of Earth, the superhero gets to be part of a tokusatsu/sentai live action show for some children. I also love that the UISAS also studies space archaeology which seems to be something all governments of the world should be doing. We should also be building gigantic robots, but no one will listen to me about that.
War of the Worlds: Extinction (2024)
Sequel
At the end of War of the Worlds: Annihilation, General Skuller (William Baldwin) is taking spaceships into space to colonize - attack - other planets after the planet Earth - destroyed by years of pollution - comes after the planet Emios. He sends Alice (April Mae Davis) through the wormhole that connects the two planets and has her use the Terra Modus to destroy our homeworld by creating a series of natural disasters.
Earth's defenses are led by General Alfaro (Michael Paré), who coincidentally has an ex-wife named Sybil (Kate Hodge) and a daughter named Jill (Jessy Holtermann) who are studying that very same device. Yes, it's the battle we've always wanted: Baldwin vs. Paré! Where does Eric Roberts stand in all of this?
Directed by Christopher Ray (Fred Olen Ray's son; he also directed Mercenaries, Almighty Thor and Mega Shark vs. Kolossus) and written by Marc Gottlieb ( Time Pirates) - and produced by The Asylum - this really makes you wonder who the heroes and who the villains are. Maybe there aren't any when it comes to war? Maybe we have no real choice over who are leader is going to be because both options are the worst possible? Is The Asylum making a deep point for us to consider? No, of course not. They just want to use disaster footage from other movies and have another series of movies to make money from. There's nothing wrong with that. That's what exploitation is all about.
Miami Supercops (1985)
Miami Supercops
Seven years ago, after a daring bank robbery in Detroit, FBI agents Doug Bennett (Terence Hill) and Steve Forest (Bud Spencer) were only able to arrest one of the three criminals, Joe Garret (Richard Liberty, yes, Dr. Logan from Day of the Dead). They never found the other two thieves or the $20 million they stole. And as soon as Garret gets out of jail, he shows up in Miami and even sooner is dead. Doug has stayed an agent, but Steve is now a flight instructor. This is the chance to solve the one case that they never did, so they disguise themselves as police officers and go to Miami. Well, Doug wants to solve the case. Steve wants left alone, but Doug tells him their old boss Tanney (C. B. Seay) has been killed. It's a lie just to get him to go.
Miami Supercops is the last non-Western that Hill and Spencer would be in together - 1994's Troublemakers is their last movie - and it's an attempt to stay current and be like Miami Vice while reminding their fans of 1977's Crime Busters. But yeah - Miami Vice - and we all know how much Italians not only love to rip off pop culture but to go to Florida to make movies. This doesn't have as much of the humor as their past films and way more guns than slaps. Oh yeah - this also has some Beverly Hills Cop in it and has the 80s synth that you want it to have as a soundtrack (Carmelo and Michelangelo La Bionda, who also did the Antonio Margheriti movie Virtual Weapon that teams up Hill with Marvin Hagler, Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure and Super Fuzz, are the composers).
Bruno Corbucci made the journey from writing two of the most violent Westerns ever - Django and The Great Silence to name two - for his brother Sergio and ended up making movies like this, Aladdin and multiple movies with Tomas Milan playing Inspector Nico Giraldi. He wrote this movie with Luciano Vincenzoni, who also was the writer for Raw Deal, Orca, A Quiet Place In the Country and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.
I kind of like the character of Annabelle, a larger woman played by Rhonda Lunstedt, who was a pro bodybuilder and one of the touring American Gladiators. Her only other acting role is in an episode of Miami Vice - that came in good here, you know? - and in Sergio Martino's wild Uppercut Man, a movie I keep trying to get people to watch. Italian-American character actor Buffy Dee is also in this. You may remember him as Barney the club owner in Mako, the Jaws of Death. He was also in Nightmare Beach, the Hill and Spencer movie Go For It and Lady Ice.
My goal is to watch all the Hill and Spencer movies, as they always fill me with joy. Also: There's a new video game, Slaps and Beans 2, that is somehow available in the U. S. I feel like it's been made only for me.
Tales from the Crypt: Deadline (1991)
Non-horror
Charlie McKenzie (Richard Jordan) was a reporter once. But now, he's a drunk that can barely survive. Then he meets Vicki (Marg Helgenberger) and one night of love with her has him fixing his life and trying to get his job back, even if his boss Phil Stone (Richard Herd) and sister Mildred (Rutanya Alda) don't believe that he can ever get back off the booze. Even his bartender wants him to stop drinking.
"So, what'll it be, stranger? Can I interest you in a mai die? Or would you prefer a rum and choke? Or maybe you'd like something a little stronger. I've got just the thing. It's a nasty little snootfull about a newshound named Charlie who needs a murder story and a drink. But not necessarily in that order. Ah, what some people won't do for a good stiff one. I call this little eye-opener "Deadline.""
Charlie has to bring in a murder story. He finds it in a diner, as Nikos Stavo (Jon Polito) argues with his unseen wife in the kitchen. Charlie runs in for his story, only to learn that the woman who is getting him back on his feet was just sleeping with drunks to upset her husband. So our protagonist kills her and calls in his story, ending this episode in a sanitarium.
This episode is directed and co-written by one of Tales from the Crypt's producers, Walter Hill. It's as good as you hoped it would be. He wrote it with his assistant, Mae Woods, who would go on to be a producer of movies such as Streets of Fire, Red Heat and Crossroads.
This episode is based on "Deadline" from Shock SuspenStories #12. It was written by Al Feldstein and William Gaines and drawn by Jack Kamen. This episode feels like it could run along with "Mournin' Mess" as they are so close to each other.