A GUN FOR 100 GRAVES (1968)

Umberto Lenzi is (in)famous for making some of the more violent and sleazy films in the Italian cult movie canon, so naturally when I discovered that he'd entered my beloved spaghetti western genre I just had to see what it looked like. Lenzi plus spaghetti westerns equals A GUN FOR 100 GRAVES. It's a great name, if nothing else.

Aside from the title, the cast certainly showed promise too, being positively bursting with Eurocult talent. Eduardo Fajardo, Piero Lulli, Peter Lee Lawrence and John Ireland all show up, along with many other faces familiar to regular spaghetti western viewers.

It's not a good sign for those hoping to catch some full-on Lenzi mayhem then when it turns out that the lead character Jim Slade (Lawrence) turns out to be not just a pacifist but also some kind of Jehovah's witness, albeit not a particularly convincing one. That's a bit odd for a spaghetti western, which I guess makes it stand out from the crowd a little, however we can thank Lenzi that this unusual approach to characters does extend to the villains too.

We are treated therefore to a band of escaped lunatics whose numbers include a pyromaniac, a rabid sex fiend, an amnesiac and a good old psycho (Fajardo). Thank you Lenzi!

Alas that's pretty much the most memorable contribution to the film as far as Lenzi-esque mayhem goes. Most of the particularly brutal moments happen off screen, but there is still a fairly high body count and we are treated to a final twenty minutes during which there are plenty of shootouts, twists and casual violence. On top of all that, there's a gloriously cynical ending worthy of Sergio Corbucci (DJANGO, THE GREAT SILENCE) himself.

The film isn't completely without humour though - I particularly like the gravestone in the cemetery which is marked simply "bearded Mexican".

I watched this on a German DVD. There are some audio hiccups on the English soundtrack, some minor print damage and the colours are slightly faded but it's probably the best presentation around at the moment. It doesn't deliver the sort of OTT violence you'd want from a Lenzi western but it's enough fun for me to recommend it.

Horrorthon'08: DEMONS 2 (1986)

Last year's screening of DEMONS was a highlight so it was a delight to see the sequel getting an outing this year.

Of course, it's a stupid film, and the stupidity is only amplified (as is so often the case) by the hilarious dubbing on the English language version.

Gone is the first film's cinema setting (although the original is referred to in a nonsensical sub-plot), this time replaced with a modern skyscraper. It doesn't really matter, the end result is the same: lots of people being attacked and killed by crazy zombie-demon-type-things.

Mad monsters, hilarious dubbing, gruesome deaths and a barmy plot, all wrapped up in some delightful visuals and a typically wonderful electronic score. It's exactly what you expect the film to deliver, and it's exactly what you want it to deliver. A great big stupid ninety minutes of fun.

THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE (1971)

Dublin doesn't look this yellow in real life

I love giallo movies.

Gialli, to give you a drastically oversimplified description, were thrillers that were made in Italy predominantly in the 70s and were marked by stylish direction, shamelessly exploitative sexual content, gruesome violence and some crazy plot twists, among many other things. The most famous (among the public at least) contributor to the genre was probably Dario Argento but many, many directors plied their trade in the genre and pretty much anyone who's anyone in the world of cult Italian cinema of the 1970s dabbled in giallo material at one time or another. There are a number of blogs out there who cover them in depth, if all this chat has given you an appetite for more.

So, yes, I love gialli. I also happen to love Dublin, as regular readers will know, so when I discovered that there was a giallo made in Dublin I was rather excited. When I then discovered that said film had just been released on DVD I practically soiled myself with excitement.

Okay, so neither the film nor the DVD presentation of it are exactly top of the giallo class, but I was delighted to see it all the same.

Directed by Riccardo Freda, the film centres around a murder case being investigated by an Irish policeman played by Italian cult movie veteran Luigi Pistilli. Just when you thought you were used to the bad dubbing in these films, you get Luigi Pistilli dubbed with the voice of an Irishman. Priceless.

The case is made more complicated by a number of factors, such as Pistilli being a washed-up has-been, the murder being linked to a high-powered ambassador and the fact that, like all good giallo movies, everyone in the film appears to be really suspicious.

The DVD itself is not great. The picture quality is watchable but varies from okay to below average, in some places appearing to be taken from either a video copy or a really bad print. Oversaturated colours and soft, murky shadows are the order of the day. The sound is equally patchy, but overall the presentation is acceptable for a film of such rarity and it is at least in anamorphic widescreen.

As for the film... well, it's certainly not a great example of the genre. Things look hopeful when, just five minutes in, a murder occurs involving acid in the face followed by a graphic throat-slashing. Incidentally, if this sort of thing sounds repulsive to you, you probably don't want to watch any more gialli.

But back to the film. That opening murder gets our hopes up but from then on in, highlights are too thinly spread out over the film and all too often the most horrific stuff happens off screen - not what we giallo fans pay our money for! That said, there's still other tasteless stand-out scenes, not least of which is the scene in which a young school girl is graphically assaulted. Granted, the girl was probably an adult playing well below her age, but it's still a perfect example of the sleazy anything-goes attitude that makes gialli so engrossing/gobsmacking.

The conclusion, when it comes, is somewhat typical of giallo material in that it is totally and utterly barmy, although you could just about argue that the clues were all there if you looked really, really hard.

Stelvio Cipriani supplies a decent score, Pistilli is always fun to watch and there's some great old footage of 1970s Dublin (if, like me, you like that sort of stuff) but overall it's a weaker effort with the occasional memorable moment.

Ferdinando Baldi

Last week, Italian director Ferdinando Baldi died at the age of 80. I don't know much about it, and I don't know much about him - but what I do know is that the few films of his that I've watched have formed a very enjoyable part of my ongoing love affair with Italian cult cinema, in particular the spaghetti western.

Despite the fact that I watch a ridiculous number of spaghetti westerns, I've actually covered a comparably small number of them here in the blog pages of the Freakpit. Nevertheless, of the ones I have covered, Baldi has already featured so I guess that minor distinction can count for something.

BLINDMAN is the film I've already enthused about here and, it could be argued, might be his most notable. It's certainly one of the few spaghetti westerns that has a very distinct identity of its own. See my previous entry on the subject for more about this movie.

THE FORGOTTEN PISTOLERO is closer to being a standard spaghetti western, but is still more enjoyable than a great deal of the other films of this genre, aided by a lovely score courtesy of Roberto Pregadio and some memorable casting (the always wonderful Luciano Rossi and the stunningly lovely Pilar Velazquez).

VIVA DJANGO, while arguably not an official sequel to Sergio Corbucci's seminal spaghetti western, took on board some elements of the earlier film and moulded them into a solid piece of entertainment. Rossi again features along with Horst Frank, Italian cult cinema favourite George Eastman and, in the lead, Terence Hill. Hill would later become more well known for his parts in comedic spaghetti westerns (such as the TRINITY series) but this rare outing into more serious territory gave him one of his better roles in the genre.

Finally, I should mention the other film of Baldi's that I've seen, TEXAS ADIOS. This was one of the earliest spaghetti westerns I saw (probably beaten only by the more famous Leone films and a couple of DJANGO movies) and helped form my love of the genre. Granted, it may have seemed fresher then before I'd had a chance to see just how formulaic a genre the spaghetti western was, but that doesn't stop it being enjoyable now and is a fun showcase for guys like Franco Nero and Luigi Pistilli to show why they were so suited to these movies. It also featured cinematography by Enzo Barboni (aka E.B. Clutcher), as did VIVA DJANGO, who would go on to find fame in the genre himself, directing several TRINITY films.

I don't pretend that this is a particularly useful obituary and it certainly isn't a representative overview of the man's career; but I felt I should add something here since the chances are that his death won't be big news over here. But for the films above, and I'm sure the pleasure he gave plenty of other viewers, I salute him all the same.

It's all gone a bit quiet

It's that time of the year again - the Edinburgh festivals (the Fringe in particular) have started and I've been spending too much time there, hence the absence of film-related chat here recently.

Between the festivals and various other stuff that I've had to do, I've hardly even seen any films recently. In fact, here's my recent film viewing in its entirety.

ROBOTECH: THE SHADOW CHRONICLES is a flashy anime sci-fi movie that boasts some impressive visuals and a lot of things blowing up but very little else. This was paired with FULL METAL ALCHEMIST: THE MOVIE, which again offers some neat visuals but its storyline involving parallel universes, dragons, war, magic and a whole load of other things besides is a garbled mess.

WHITE FANG is a kids' film made in Italy in the 1970s - imagine LASSIE, but with a wolf. I watched it because of my interest in Eurocult cinema and Lucio Fulci in particular, but this isn't one of his best. It's got a good cast (you can't go totally wrong with Franco Nero) and it's quite dark for a kiddie film, but the version I saw was the English dubbed version. I'm used to bad dubbing by now, but this one is among the worst, thus causing a great deal of the more serious aspects of the film to suddenly become quite daft.

I also saw, for the first time, a minor 70s gangster film entitled THE GODFATHER. A lot of you probably aren't familiar with it, but it's got some decent acting by one or two okay actors, a reasonable story, and it's an okay way to pass a couple of hours. Yes, I'm being sarcastic, it's an amazing film and I can't believe it's taken me this long to see it. Maybe I'll get round to watching Part II sometime.

And that's it.

I'll not bother giving you any reviews of what I've seen, but if you want some tips, then I recommend The Black Seeds (if you fancy some music), Reginald D Hunter, Richard Herring, Mark Watson and Aeneas Faversham Returns (if you fancy some comedy) and theatre is your bag, then you won't get better than This Piece of Earth, a romance set against the backdrop of the Irish famine, possible the best piece of theatre I've ever seen, and impeccable acted by its two-player cast.

Of course, the Edinburgh International Film Festival starts next week too, so I guess that'll give me plenty of films to write about. Assuming I actually have time in between watching them all. In the meantime, it'll probably still be quite quiet here.

DEATH SENTENCE (1969)

DEATH SENTENCE
aka SENTENZA DI MORTE
Koch Media (Germany)
Region 0 PAL, 2.35:1 (16*9)
Running time 90m

I know, you thought I'd finished my spaghetti western round-up. So did I. Then I found a few scribbled notes about DEATH SENTENCE, so what the hell.

In many ways, this one isn't a typical spaghetti western. The director, Mario Lanfranchi, is not the most well-known among directors of the genre, and it's not that surprising based on this effort. That isn't to say the film isn't any good because it's actually a really decent entry in the genre - it's just a little different and possibly not suited to the tastes of people who expect exactly the same thing from every spaghetti western they watch.

For one thing, it has a far more theatrical feel. There's not as much action as you'd expect, instead offering up a lot of talking. This approach to character building is admirable, though many a fan might find themselves wondering when the talking is going to stop and the shooting is going to start. This is a spaghetti western after all.

The music, by Gianni Ferrio, is not your typical spaghetti western soundtrack fodder either. While this is a good thing in terms of the movie's score, it's not so good when listening to the main song - I'll be honest, the song is simply rubbish. Shame really, as most spaghetti theme songs (one of the few spaghetti western cliches that wasn't started by Sergio Leone's movies) tend to be reasonably easy on the ear.

The plot is one of the more standard aspects, offering up the usual helping of greed and revenge. Where it does differ however is in the structure. We are introduced to the film with the hero of the piece getting one over on one of the villains, then flashes back to show his quest to take out one killer at a time. This four-part quest is a little like the one employed by Jodorowski in EL TOPO, except this time the story isn't as barmy and actually makes a bit of sense. Like Jodorowski's film, DEATH SENTENCE also benefits from some wonderful desert photography too.

The cast of the film is mostly pretty average (the lead is Robin Clarke, who manages but isn't exactly comparable to Eastwood, Nero, Van Cleef, etc., and the female characters feel like they've been forced into the film for sex appeal and nothing else) with a couple of exceptions. Cult cinema veteran Richard Conte makes an appearance, which is always welcome, but the best of the film belongs to Tomas Milian.

Cuban actor Milian always steals the show no matter which of the countless Eurocult movies of his you happen to be watching. In DEATH SENTENCE he's sporting a garish albino look (see above) that looks totally out of place on him yet helps in making this villain one of his more memorable characters. It also helps that he's addicted to blondes and gold, an addiction he registers with much hamming and scenery-chewing. With an over the top performance like that you just wonder where he can possible go without it ending in an anticlimax, but I'm happy to report he manages it. His death scene (don't tell me I've spoiled it, if you like spaghetti westerns, you knew he'd die) is possibly the highlight of the film, as he throws himself about in the most contorted spasms, in the end making you wonder if he's dying or breakdancing.

It's worth watching for Milian alone, but if you're after a slightly unusual spaghetti western there's probably much for you to enjoy.

Extras on the disc include trailers, a making-of featuretter (conversation with the director in English) and an audio commentary with the director (again, he speaks in English).

A STRANGER IN TOWN (1967) / THE STRANGER RETURNS (1967)

A STRANGER IN TOWN / THE STRANGER RETURNS
aka UN DOLLARO FRA I DENTI / UN UOMO, UN CAVALLO, UNA PISTOLA
Alfa Digital (USA)
Region 0 NTSC, 1.85:1 (16*9)
Running time 86m/95m

This double bill of the first two (of three) Stranger movies makes no effort to disguise the Leone influence, borrowing heavily of both the characters and situations from the maestro's Dollars trilogy.

The first film (also known as A DOLLAR IN THE TEETH) sees the Stranger (Tony Anthony) wander into town and assist a bunch of no-good Mexicans steal a large sum of gold from the US Army before attempting to turn the tables on them and steal it back for himself. So far, so spaghetti western. I need not reveal much more of the plot as anyone with a passing familiarity with the genre will be able to write the script themselves from here. The unfortunate problem is that you get the feeling that's exactly what director Luigi Vanzi did, putting little thought into anything that might distinguish it from the rest of the bunch.

Tony Anthony doesn't work in the pseudo-Clint role. He doesn't have the presence of an Eastwood, Nero, Van Cleef or any of the other familiar Stranger-type characters who came before him or followed afterwards and just doesn't seem particularly menacing, no matter how much the script might try to make him so. Indeed, he is too often upstaged by lead villain and spaghetti regular Frank Wolff, who barely pauses for breath in between the chunks of scenery that he chews.

The sequel is equally derivative but still an enjoyable romp involving more greed, treachery and gunplay, this time revolving around yet another haul of gold. One of the few moments of genius in the story (which incidentally was partly the work of the returning Anthony) concerns the hidden whereabouts of the gold, which I won't spoil here for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. It's a mindblowing twist, albeit one that's slightly ridiculous in the cold light of day.

Anthony is again slightly lacking in the leading man department and certainly doesn't make himself look any harder this time around by wearing a lovely pink shirt. I'm not one for making judgements based on a man's dress sense, and I'm not casting aspersions on men who like to wear pink - but come on, he's supposed to be a gunslinger. Nonetheless, nobody lives long enough to question his dress sense if he has his hand on his pistol.

The film boasts a good score by Stelvio Cipriani which is one of the most blatant of Morricone rip-offs (particularly the opening title). That in itself wouldn't be so bad (it's certainly not unexpected of the genre) but the score is woefully overused, playing through scenes where silence would have said so much more.

Alfa's disc is not great. The prints used are badly beaten up, albeit anamorphically enhanced, showing a fair amount of damage and suffering from some pretty faded colours. The audio quality is clear but suffers from a tinny distortion that makes it all too clear that substandard material has been transferred to a digital format, a fault that is compounded by the pixellated appearance of some of the scenes. It almost looks like it's been taken from a video source rather than a print or negative. Overall the disc is watchable but it appears a definitive release of these films yet eludes us - it certainly pales in comparison to some of Alfa's other good, though flawed, restorations such as crime thriller VIOLENT NAPLES or Lucio Fulci's SEVEN NOTES IN BLACK.

Extras are limited to a couple of trailers.

That's the end of my brief spaghetti western DVD round up, although they will make a return since I've got piles of them sitting here. Normal service, for whatever that means in the context of this blog, will be resumed shortly.

ONE AFTER THE OTHER (1968)

ONE AFTER THE OTHER
aka UNO DOPO L'ALTRO
SPO Entertainment (Japan)
R2 NTSC; LB(2.35:1)
Running Time 99m

Richard Harrison strolls into town following a bank robbery and promptly sets off on a bloody trail of revenge for a man who was killed in the raid. It's a staple plot of the spaghetti western but is considerably boosted by endless twists and turns in a story that is positively bursting with double-crossing treachery from start to finish.

This is one of Harrison's better spaghetti performances and in this particular role he certainly makes for a rather atypical gunslinger. Immaculately dressed, clean shaven and bespectacled, there is no danger of him being mistaken for any of the string of Eastwood/Nero clones that populate so many other spaghettis. His appearance should not deceive however - he can certainly handle himself in a fight, particularly when guns are drawn.

A highlight of the movie is the finale on the deserted main street, one of the better examples of a typical spaghetti showdown which kicks off with the best use of dynamite I've ever seen in one of these films. Best of all, even when the gunfight is over there remains one final bout of double-crossing that comes as a genuine surprise and a memorable ending to an enjoyable spaghetti western.

The picture is non-anamorphic and is typical of many of the Japanese discs, particularly early SPO efforts, in having visible (if not intrusive) print damage and, in some places, oversaturated colour (with bright colours particularly bleeding in some places). It's nevertheless watchable and holds its own even while zoomed in on a widescreen monitor.

Extras include a poster gallery and a couple of trailers (anamorphic!) for two unrelated spaghettis starring Giuliano Gemma (ONE SILVER DOLLAR and ADIOS GRINGO).

Tomorrow: A STRANGER IN TOWN / THE STRANGER RETURNS

PISTOLEROS (1967)

PISTOLEROS
aka BALLAD OF A GUNMAN
Wild East Productions (USA)
Region 0 NTSC, 2.35:1 (16*9)
Running time 95m

This movie wears its inspiration firmly on its sleeve. It boasts a score derivative of Morricone's famous spaghetti style (which is not to put down the contribution of composer Marcello Giombini - the score is familiar but it's also very good); the main titles feature an animation (apparently rotoscoped) of a man on horseback not unlike the animated titles of Leone's earlier westerns; and most shamelessly of all, it even opens on a scene of a solitary figure confronting a bunch of bandits while explaining to them that his mule doesn't like violence!

The story, and you may have heard this one before in a multitude of other spaghettis, concerns a young cocky bounty killer (who, clean-shaven and top-to-tail outfitted in black leather, looks like a cross between a gunfighter and a reject from the Village People) who forms a reluctant partnership (after some initial squabbling, of course) with a wiser, older gunfighter (Angelo Infanti) in order to pursue a vicious Mexican bandit and his gang. They both have a desire to get their hands on the man, but for different reasons, which will see them come into conflict with each other as well as their prey. The stars of the film, Angelo Infantini and Yugoslavian actor Anthony Ghidra, are far from household names but hold their own when measured against the other more well-known faces in the spaghetti genre.

I'll say this for PISTOLEROS - it certainly doesn't skimp on the action. There are shootouts aplenty and while they might not be as stylised as Leone's, director Alfio Caltabiano makes up for it in sheer quantity. As far as action goes however, the movie's main strengths lie in plain old fashioned fisticuffs. A highlight sees a lengthy saloon brawl about halfway through the film that is remarkably well-choreographed compared to many other spaghetti western bar-room fights that last only a fraction of the time.

The audio on the whole is very good but suffers very occasionally from some brief dropouts where a couple of lines of dialogue are missing. The flaws are noticable but not significant. Similarly the picture has visible, though not intrusive, print damage in places and suffers a few frame skips here and there but again the damage is not significant. The anamorphic picture is otherwise excellent, especially given the usual spaghetti western standards, and does full justice to the sweeping vistas that dominate Guglielmo Mancori's stunning widescreen photography.

Wild East Productions are fast becoming the spaghetti western fan's best friend and I encourage anyone with a love of the genre to encourage them by buying this excellent disc.

Extras include a picture gallery and trailers for other Anthony Ghidra westerns.

Tomorrow: ONE AFTER THE OTHER

APOCALYPSE JOE (1971)

After Friday's effort revealed to me that recycling stuff I've posted on other internet sites is a great way to make it look like I'm putting effort into my blog, I dug out a few DVD reviews that I originally wrote for another site. They're all spaghetti westerns, so if you're a fan be sure to check back daily for the next one. If you're not, why not check back anyway, just in case I can convert you to the cause?

Anyway, on to the first review. The DVDs were all from various sources so I've listed the technical details too.

APOCALYPSE JOE

aka A MAN CALLED JOE CLIFFORD

X-Rated Kult Media (Germany)

R2 PAL; 2.35:1 (16*9)

Running Time 91m

You could be forgiven for thinking you're going to get something a little different with this one, given that it opens with spaghetti regular Anthony Steffen reciting the famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy from Hamlet (this film borrows from the play in terms of it story too, though not to the extent of the previously-reviewed-here JOHNNY HAMLET). The illusion is soon shattered however when, as soon as the titles finish, some bad (presumed) villains are dispatched, all thoughts of that Danish bloke are vanquished and we're back in formulaic spaghetti western territory.

Of course, if formulaic films are a problem for you then you've probably no interest in this particular genre of films anyway, given that there are only two or three different stories spread between about five hundred films. In this case it's the old favourite - Steffen arrives in town to collect a goldmine he's inherited from a dead uncle, only to discover that his uncle was murdered and his mine (along with the rest of the town) has been overrun by some nasty characters. And as we all know, it wouldn't be a spaghetti western if our mysterious stranger (and budding thespian) didn't set about trying to get his revenge and clean up the town.

The conclusion of the film may be as predictable as the next oater, but everyone knows the fun is in getting there. In that respect APOCALYPSE JOE delivers. Of particular delight is the last half hour of the film, which is a good solid gunfighting finale (after Steffen's had a chance to show off his Shakespeare skills again) packed with thrilling action and increasingly inventive ways of killing people.

Steffen seems to be enjoying himself more than usual in this film, perhaps as a result of getting to stretch his acting muscles a bit further (or at least as far as they can be stretched while playing the usual rugged spaghetti gunfighter), and in Eduardo Fajardo he has a perfectly over-the-top nemesis. The two previously fought each other in A COFFIN FOR THE SHERIFF but it wasn't as wildly enjoyable as this effort.

Now to the disc itself (released under its German title SPIEL DEIN SPIEL UND TOTE, JOE). X-Rated have done a great job on this one (and they celebrate that by releasing the DVD with no less than 3 different cover variants) in terms of both audio and video.

The audio is clean and crisp, and really highlights Bruno Nicolai's score. The one-time Morricone collaborator turns in a terrific effort that is simultaneously typical of the genre and yet a bit more energetic thanks largely to the emphasis on electric guitar. One thing worth noting about the audio - on the English version, we hear only "To be or not to be" muttered by Steffen before he is eclipsed by the title music; on the German audio track however we can still hear him delivering the full speech (albeit with a slightly more teutonic slant than the bard intended) while the music plays.

The video has a minor flaw in that some scenes seem a little jittery. Admittedly it could be that the cameraman had maybe had a little too much coffee but to me it looks more like a small flaw with the print. It's a shame to pick up on this minor quibble because otherwise the anamorphic picture is almost immaculate.

One final note on the authoring of the disc - if you select from the main menu to watch the film in English you get a rather annoying message popping up in the lower black bar throughout the film telling you that the film is not for sale outside of Germany. I found on my DVD player that I could get round this by choosing to watch it in German and then switching the audio to English as soon as the film starts.

The extras consist of various alternate opening credits, an Italian trailer, a trailer for MANNAJA (all anamorphic) and the main title theme of the movie should you wish to listen to it... and of course it's all wrapped up in one of those gorgeous clamshell cases that X-Rated do so well.

It's a terrific spaghetti western and X-Rated have done an equally terrific job of presenting it. Fans of the genre should seek this one out.

Tomorrow: PISTOLEROS!

One man's terrorist is another man's ninja lesbian

Okay, neither of them are KILLPOINT, but before I disappear off for the weekend (nothing film-related this time) I thought I'd leave you with my brief thoughts on another couple of late nighters that I caught on the same channel. Even more brief than you might think, given that most of the following was just recycled from stuff I wrote elsewhere. What can I say, I'm lazy. Anyway, on to the movies. Gritty political thriller and dodgy 80s smut, what more can you ask for?

THE INFORMANT (1997)

In what must be one of the most ridiculously shameful marketing ploys ever, one of the posters for this film featured top billing for Timothy Dalton, who also appeared as the main character on the poster, in the usual James Bond gun-in-front-of-chest pose. Seriously, go and look it up on the IMDb, it's ridiculous. It does both Dalton and the film a disservice, as it's actually a pretty decent thriller that tries to show the human side of the violence in Northern Ireland without coming down too hard on either side. Granted, it's probably not quite so powerful now as it once was, in light of recent developments, but it's still worth seeking out.

It's actually primarily about an IRA soldier (Anthony Brophy) who turns informant to save (he thinks) his wife and child, only to open up a whole can of worms that sees him in more trouble than ever. Brophy's performance is good; Dalton is actually just a supporting character, but is still a delight as the scenery-chewing (though sometimes a little OTT) loyalist policeman trying to protect him (while clearly hating him); Cary Elwes is also good as the naive British squaddie who sympathises with the informant as a person, if not with his cause. The majority of the cast is good in fact, and Maria Lennon is superb as Brophy's wife, though she has pretty much the only notable female role. SPACE PRECINCT's Simone Bendix turns up briefly, showing a lot more than she did in that series, but it's not her acting ability I'm talking about.

And on that subject...

CHRISTINA (1984)

This Harry Alan Towers produced softcore effort from the 80s is another film that is so laughably bad it's a riot. Jewel Shepard is the title character, a jet setter who travels the world living it up but getting mixed up with terrorists and kidnappers (nearly all of whom she has sex with, obviously).

The stage is set early on when a terrorist (from the "10th of November" group - a terrorist organisation that would seem to consist largely of martial arts practising lesbians) attempts to kidnap Christina from a luxury mansion where she's enjoying dinner. The plan is foiled, so the folks decide the best plan is to tie up the intruder then get back to dinner. Hmmm. Not surprisingly she escapes. It's at this point that we are treated to one of the film's first classic lines of dialogue:

"I don't know how she got in... but no one else will!"

Forgive me if I don't find the latter half of the sentence particularly reassuring in light of the first half.

Granted, a lot of the awful dialogue will be a result of the equally awful dubbing, but there's no disguising that this film is a pile of mince. Bad acting; bad dubbing; obligatory saxaphone; martial arts contests that seem to have the main objective of ripping off each other's clothes; a string of bizarre fantasy dream sequences that would undoubtedly increase the sales of toy cars; It's entirely terrible. It's not even like it's shot particularly well - despite some nice locations, the film never looks particularly glamorous, and it seems like just having everything in soft focus is the director's sole instruction to his crew.

Given that the film seems to be desperately wanting to be the new EMANUELLE, I got a bit worried when Christina started staring lovingly at her horse (I started having EMANUELLE IN AMERICA flashbacks) - however it's at this point that some motorbikes show up to start chasing her around. I only mention this because at one point an elaborate stunt involving a motorbike jumping over the horse just as Christina jumps off doesn't look like it goes entirely to plan and looks very much to me like the horse actually gets hit in the head. BBFC-approved this is not. (Either that or the bike comes extremely close)

The plus side however is that this scene gave rise to one of the other quality lines of the film:"I've an urge to go out riding... a horse, I mean!" (My other fave quote would have to be Christina's summary of the love-hate relationship with her lesbian captor - "I either needed her desperately... or desperately needed to kick the hell out of her!")

Aside from the quality dialogue, the bad acting and dubbing does offer up one other advantage in that the lead female of this group of lesbo-criminals ends up coming across like a female Udo Kier, and that can never be a bad thing.

That's all for now.

HOSTEL PART II... it's not very good

First of all let me apologise if, rather than reading this on the main blog, you're reading it via the site feed. I've been updating labels on old posts (in order to be able to have similarly-themed posts easily available) and thus any old post that I update appears in the feed whenever it refreshes. Apologies - it'll keep doing that until I'm finished, so sorry for all the old posts that are going to keep reappearing. If you've no idea what a site feed is or what I'm talking about, just ignore me, the blog is still the same.

So I finally got round to seeing HOSTEL PART II a few nights ago. Oh dear. I'm beginning to wonder if this whole "torture" fad is actually a reference to the people in the films or the poor sods who pay their money to sit through them.

I was assured by the young lady who sold me the ticket that it had scared her something awful. I am doing my best not to sound really patronising or up my own ass, but honestly, if this is something that can genuinely be called scary by even the most casual of viewer, then the quicker this subgenre of horror dies, the better.

It's not scary. It's not even close to being scary. It falls into the class of horror that seeks to provoke a reaction by revulsion and disgust, not by generating scares. Scary films? BLACK CHRISTMAS, THE INNOCENTS, CARRIE - they're all films that generated scares with the slightest of touches, not loud noises and the removal of body parts. And in case you think I'm just railing against modern horror in general, I'm not - I'd also point to that moment in the original Asian version of RING (you know the bit I'm talking about - with the telly) as being something that is genuinely scary in a creepy kind of way.

HOSTEL II on the other hand is just a mess, with no inkling about horror at all. Director Eli Roth is too keen to prove his love of 70s horror that he forgets that even in some of the most banal of video nasties there was still a story, some interesting characters, something to make it work. Roth just thinks that gore and tits will be enough and to be honest it's not like he even delivers much of that.

Sure, there are some graphic scenes, but not as graphic as you might think given that a lot of it happens off screen. Then there's the fact that it's all chucked in amid snippets of half-story, a dull retread of the original movie that is populated by two dimensional stereotype characters, characters that Roth attempts to make less stereotypical by having them all suddenly change personality at the drop of the hat. Ooooh, how unexpected! Except when I say "unexpected" what I really mean is "utterly pish".

One of the highlights of the film, featuring a joke that about 0.5% of the audience will understand, is when CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST director Ruggero Deodato pops up in a cameo as a cannibal - but as amusing as that scene was to me, it also highlights another of the flaws in Roth's constant "homage" to 70s horror (in CABIN FEVER, he lifted a significant portion of the soundtrack from LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT... subtle). If you're going to keep throwing in people like this (Eurocult icons Edwige Fenech and Luc Merenda also pop up) it can only have two outcomes. Either the audience has no idea who they are, in which case it's pointless, or else the viewer knows exactly who they are and are only reminded how much better the films of these guys were compared with the bobbins that's on screen at the moment.

Think HOSTEL II is scary? Watch one of the other films I just mentioned. Think it's gory? Watch an uncut version of CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST or CANNIBAL FEROX and prepare to vomit. But just don't, whatever you do, go and pay your money to see this. If you ignore it, sooner or later this little area of horror will die off and the next big thing in horror will arrive sooner. Hopefully it'll show a bit more imagination than this tosh.

VHS Lives! ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER (1969)

Today's VHS release may, I suspect, be a bootleg. Please don't call the police, I didn't know at the time. Okay, I might have suspected, but come on, I really wanted to see it. The tape just has a plain white label with ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER IN ENGLISH printed on it, while the box looks like a colour copy of a rental release. If it's an official release, it's not a very impressive one.

But on to the film. If you read the previous entries in this VHS Lives series, you'll know that I was promising another Marisa Mell appearance (that's her above). This is it. Once again there's sleaze galore but in a surprisingly classy cult movie that marked the beginning of a sustained period of quality movies by legendary Italian cult cinema maestro Lucio Fulci.

Although Fulci is most famous for his gore films, such as ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS, THE BEYOND and HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, this one is more of a Hitchcock-style thriller. In fact, if there's one film it owes a real debt to, it would be VERTIGO. That's not to say that this is in the same league as Hitch - it isn't - but it is a highly competent and taut thriller that proves what all of his fans (including me) always knew. Fulci was more than just a cheap hack with a gore fetish.

That's not to say that it's kiddy-friendly by any means. Aside from the storyline being rather complex - Jean Sorel is the young man who becomes involved with a stripper (Mell) who resembles his dead wife - there are a lot of, er, "adult situations" and the goremeister does at least manage to get one decomposing corpse in. Sleazy women, rotting bodies... actually, maybe it's a more typical Fulci movie than I thought.

To say much more would be to risk spoiling it for you. Suffice to say it's a tightly-directed thriller with plenty of twists, including a great unexpected ending, and also happens to boast a rather wonderful swinging score by Riz Ortolani, the Italian composer responsible for setting MONDO CANE and CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST to music.

The film has had a tricky history due to censorship and alternate cuts floating around over the years and so it's hard to say which version is definitive, if any. The good news however, especially for folks wishing to replace their VHS copies, is that Severin Films in the USA have just released a 2-disc region-free DVD version (the second disc in the set being a copy of Ortolani's score) which finally gives us a wonderfully remastered widescreen copy of the film, looking better than it ever has before. Again, it's not necessarily the complete or definitive version, but it does boast more of Mell (though not necessarily more clothing) and will certainly keep fans of the film happy.

And yes, I have bought a copy (this alternate cut now being released under the title PERVERSION STORY - that's where I took the above picture from, which is why it's rather nicer than VHS).

So now I can bin my possibly shady copy and you don't need to call the police after all.

The VHS marathon concludes tomorrow!

VHS Lives! DIARY OF AN EROTIC MURDERESS (1974)

With a title like that, you just know this film is crying out for a DVD release but so far no such luck. Given the pedigree of some of the talent involved though, it's probably only a matter of time before some enterprising DVD company adds it to their Euro-cult slate though.

Like yesterday's DR BLACK, MR HYDE (okay, it was actually two days ago - sorry), this tape is yet another NTSC copy from the USA (released, appropriately enough, by the wonderful people at Something Weird Video - a favourite company of mine), although the film is Italian/Spanish in origin.

The story concerns an old man (Richard Conte) who hires a beautiful young woman (Marisa Mell) to look after his son (Anthony Steffen). Just to make things more interesting though, the woman secretly seduces the son, the son happens to be mad, and the old guy happens to be very rich, something that the young woman is banking on.

It's got a decent cast but the stars are undoubtedly Mell and Steffen.

Steffen was the star of numerous cult Italian movies, particularly spaghetti westerns (yes, I'm a fan) but also, notably, THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE. I mention this film in particular because, with its blend of insanity, sleaze, a big house, a sinister woman, and a seriously mind-bending story, it's a very similar movie to this one.

Mell, a favourite of mine, has also starred in several cult European movies. Most notably she appeared in Mario Bava's classic comic caper DANGER: DIABOLIK!, undoubtedly one of the main inspirations for the AUSTIN POWERS movies. She has also graced such films as BEN AND CHARLIE (a rubbish spaghetti western which improved for the few minutes she was on screen) and several other cult classics which, rather annoyingly, I've just forgotten. Well, except for one other one, but I'll not mention that because it's going to feature in this series.

Sinister though Mell's character may be, you can almost forgive some of her actions given that she is systematically mistreated at least once by every man in the film. It almost makes it acceptable that her sole mission seems to be to get rich off the suffering of men.

I already mentioned the EVELYN connection, and it's fair to say there's a similar kind of vibe to YOUR VICE IS A LOCKED ROOM AND ONLY I HAVE THE KEY, another Euro-cult classic that boasts a suitably crazy title and totally insane storyline. The story this time round involves sex, murder, the corpses of the Templar Knights (seriously) and yes, even the titular diary, all of which brew away in a delightful cauldron of Eurosleaze, served with a side order of lounge-tastic "oooh aaaah" music and garnished with a fantastically nutty ending. Marvellous.

Oh yeah, and one more thing I just remembered. BEAST WITH A GUN. That's another cult Italian movie that Marisa Mell appeared in. Just in case you were wondering.

More VHS goodness tomorrow!

The Freakpit salutes Bruno Mattei

If you're trapped in a post-nuke future overrun by rats, these are the guys to save you

I didn't quite get round to posting about this when it happened (but then, it's me, so when do I ever?) but Italian movie director Bruno Mattei died a couple of weeks ago.

If asked to name a legendary film director, I'd bet not too many people would pick Mattei. It's not like his name featured on any lists next to Huston, Ford, Leone, Spielberg, Wilder, etc. Not surprising really, given most of his output.

You see, Mattei was a hack. But as hacks go, he was possibly the greatest hack of all. His films were pure, unadulterated trash and yet they trash of the highest calibre.

Mattei often worked under a pseudonym - Vincent Dawn is probably his most well known, but one look at the IMDb reveals a significant list of them - and I'm not entirely sure whether it was to try and fool English speaking audiences (in the same way that many Italian films of the 60s and 70s featured cast and crew with American-sounding aliases) or if it was just to try and throw people off the sent that might have had it in for him.

For Bruno Mattei was more than just an ordinary hack. He was an entirely shameless one. His films were not just knock-offs of whatever was popular, they even stooped as far as using stock library footage or even stealing wholesale from existing films. One more recent example was his film CRUEL JAWS, which I wrote about last year after seeing it at the Horrorthon festival in Dublin. As its title suggests, it's one of those seemingly countless JAWS rip-offs, made long after you'd have thought the genre was dead. Not only was it a giant-shark-on-the-loose movie however, it actually recycled footage from the other movies and even stole some music from STAR WARS. It's difficult to make it any more blatant.

His magnum opus as far as stock footage goes must surely be HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD, which was released to many territories as the wonderfully-titled ZOMBIE CREEPING FLESH. This good old fashioned video nasty was a zany zombie film that took place primarily in a jungle, thus allowing Mattei to squeeze in huge amounts of nature footage and film of jungle tribes. Of course, he made sure that he integrated it in such a way that it was being observed by a topless woman jogging along the road, but that's Mattei for you.

ZOMBI 3, another of Mattei's films, was billed as a sequel to Lucio Fulci's ZOMBI, aka ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS. It was actually partially the work of Fulci (who gets the credit on the film) but Mattei ended up playing a significant part. Once again, the film offers all manner of crazy undead-related antics that just make you stare in disbelief at the screen.

He did turn his hand to plenty of other exploitation genres in his career. THE OTHER HELL was his madcap chicken-murdering entry into the nunsploitation genre - nuns behaving badly, if you will - and he couldn't very well leave the early 80s Italian post-apocalyptic genre alone either. Thus we got RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR, in which an Earth ravaged by nuclear war is overrun by rats. This film is available in both the US and the UK on DVD and I urge all trash movie fans to check it out. Not just because I love the genre or because it's Mattei at his insane best, but primarily because the ending is one of the most gobsmacking moments of ludicrous spectacle ever committed to celluloid. It's certainly one of my faves.

Even in the latter years of his life, Mattei couldn't avoid churning out more straight-to-DVD cheapo flicks from genres long thought to be dead. Cannibals, zombies, women-in-prison... it reads like a list of popular Italian exploitation genres of the 70s but no, it's a summary of Mattei's last few movies.

I'm going to guess that you won't be seeing a special Bruno Mattei tribute montage at next year's Oscars - particularly since it would be made up of several pieces of footage that he probably stole from others - but within the realms of cult cinema his status as legend is secure. His films were trash and he was a indeed a shameless hack. But movies will be slightly saner and a lot less fun in his absence.

Something's rotten in the state of Texas

Recently - well, okay, quite some time ago now that I think I about it - I picked up a German DVD of the spaghetti western QUELLA SPORCA STORIA NEL WEST. I've no idea why the Germans love their spaghetti westerns so much, but they must do because they release a hell of a lot more there than they do here in the UK.

I've mentioned before that spaghetti western storylines only ever fall into one of three categories - they're about greed, revenge or both. This one concerns both. There's something a little more interesting than usual about this particular storyline though.

The hero of the film (Andrea Giordana) returns home one day after a lengthy period of absence to discover that his dad is dead and his mother has married his uncle. If that sounds a little familiar, you should also know that the hero's name is Hamilton; his girlfriend ends up dead in a river; he lives on a ranch named Ellsinore; and yes, at one point, he does end up having a chat with a gravedigger. And did I mention that the film was released under the title JOHNNY HAMLET?

Yes, that's right, in case you'd forgotten when I mentioned it previously; it's the story of old Bill Shakespeare's Hamlet, but as a spaghetti western. Admit it, you're sold already.

The idea for the movie came from Sergio Corbucci, possibly the only director to rival Leone for the impact he had on Italian westerns, having directed the classics DJANGO, THE GREAT SILENCE, COMPANEROS and THE HELLBENDERS (among others). However, while there are some Corbucci-style touches (a nasty injury at the end of the film reflects the mean-spirited flavour of most of Corbucci's efforts), the film was directed by another legend of cult Italian cinema, Enzo Castellari.

While there were a lot of hacks specialising in genre cinema in Italy in the 60s and 70s, Castellari was not one of them. Despite often working with limited budgets, his passion and talent for visuals always elevated his efforts, whether he was working in westerns, crime thrillers or even my beloved post-apocalyptic MAD MAX rip-offs. JOHNNY HAMLET is no different, and serves Castellari with plenty of opportunity to make his mark on the story.

The film's lighting, sets, location work and cinematography are all first rate, and one of Castellari's most striking scenes sees a swirling camera twist its way around our hero as he delivers a Shakespeare-style soliloquy in an underground graveyard. Touches like this, combined with Castellari's brilliance at squeezing impressive action set pieces out of minimal budgets make JOHNNY HAMLET a film to remember.

The idea of remaking classic works as spaghetti westerns wasn't exclusive to this production - Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS was a shameless rip-off of Kurosawa's YOJIMBO, the story of Carmen supplied the inspiration for MAN, PRIDE AND VENGEANCE and, in one of the oddest ideas, the assassination of JFK was retold as a western in THE PRICE OF POWER. JOHNNY HAMLET remains one of the finest examples though, and one of the most faithful to its source. And, just in case you missed it, there's a "subtle" nod to the source material when a travelling band of actors turn up in town performing Hamlet.

The only aspect of the story where this film steers slightly away from the original play is with the finale. The whole "the play is the thing" idea is brushed aside, at least literally, and instead the bad guy is dispatched in a more traditional way - the good old-fashioned shoot-out.

On closer inspection however, it's possibly not as far from Shakespeare's vision as it might appear. As Johnny lures his uncle to his fate using a trail of gold dust, the villain is undone by greed in much the same way as Hamlet's uncle was undone by his own guilt. I hope I've not spoiled the ending for you - I'm assuming most of you were probably forced to read the play at school anyway. But heck, I bet you never surfed into the Freakpit today expecting me to be talking about Shakespeare though, did you?

Sure, the purists might argue that this isn't faithful to Hamlet or that it's a bastardisation of the great bard's work, or something like that. Nonsense. The only reason Hamlet didn't play out like this is because William Shakespeare (overrated by the way) was unfortunately born too early to have seen a spaghetti western.

If he had seen them, I'm sure Bill would admit that having a couple of sweaty men staring at each other sternly then shooting it out to the death is a far better ending than some nonsense about poisoning each other. JOHNNY HAMLET is Shakespeare as I'm sure the bard intended it to be seen!

Ennio Morricone @ Hammersmith Apollo, London

Friday night, and I arrived at the Hammersmith Apollo in London to discover that despite the tickets stating that Ennio Morricone's show was a 7:30 start with doors opening at 7pm, actually they'd decided it was going to start at 8:15pm.

After wandering around for a few minutes, swearing at a disfunctional cash machine and being stared at by a mad person in Tesco I decided to just go in and check out the venue (I'd held off on accound of their "no readmission" policy but finally gave up waiting).

I figured that if nothing else I could go in and get a drink. Except of course that the switch of arrangements meant that everyone else was there early as well, and they were all thinking the same thing. I'm not surprised either since, with most of the crowd already there, we were packed in so tightly that sardines could mock me without fear of recourse and the foyer of the Apollo had turned into a smoke-filled sweatpit.

It's strange that despite the concert starting forty-five minutes later than planned there were still plenty of people for whom it seemed troublesome to actually get to their seat on time. Equally strange was the high number of people who had to leave for the toilet within a few minutes of the concert beginning. If it was to get a drink, it seems strange that they couldn't have done it earlier or waited for a break; if it was to genuinely get to the toilet then I'm equally mystified as the venue was so hot I'd already sweated so much out of me that I was close to turning into dust.

I know what you're thinking - this is just turning into a massive grumble. Well, not quite, but I've a few more to get off my chest (without even mentioning the £4.50 booking fee - can anyone explain that to me?). Nice as the venue is, it's not as suited to a full orchestra and choir as something like the Albert Hall, or the Royal Concert Hall (Glasgow), or the Usher Hall (Edinburgh), or the National Concert Hall (Dublin), or, well, an awful lot of places really. And it must hold a record for the most toilet stalls with broken locks, ever.

But okay, I'll quit moaning and get on with the show.

Jonathan Ross (he of television fame) popped up on stage rather unexpectedly at the start to talk gushingly of Mr Morricone's achievements before the maestro himself took to the stage to much applause and cheering from the audience.

The concert opened with three pieces from NOVECENTO which, I confess, I know sod all about, except that the music's nice. For the most part, the next suite was also comprised of music from films I'd never heard of or at least never seen (nice though, and some of it familiar) with the exception of the fantastic "Deborah's Theme" from ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. It's a great film, but Morricone's contribution lifts it to another level and it's great to hear that music performed live by a great orchestra (the Roma Sinfonietta if you're interested).

The next suite was much the same in as much as I don't know most of the films they came from, but again the music was terrific and highlights (I'm familiar with the music if not the sources) were the startlingly impressive renditions of "The Sicilian Clan" and "Come Madalena". You'd recognise the music even if you've not seen the films and the latter marked the evening's first appearance (not literally - she was hidden off stage for this part) of the cracking soprano Susanna Rigacci.

I was of course more than familiar with the next suite, given that it was a medley of pieces from Morricone's work on Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns. Actually, I say "of course" as if you should be aware of how much I love spaghetti westerns, but actually I think I've only written one blog entry on spaghetti westerns - Blindman to be precise - and two if you include my very brief comments on the Spaghetti Western Orchestra at this year's Edinburgh Fringe. I must rectify that some time.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. For this suite, Rigacci was brought out onto centre stage (presumably she was held back in the name of showmanship) to a rapturous welcome, although she remained silent for the opener. The audience didn't, however, as everyone in the auditorium instantly recognised the theme from THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (rearranged for concert performance but still remarkably faithful). There's just something about watching a 100-member chorus (the marvellous Crouch End Festival Choir) get ready for this theme tune that just makes your hair stand on end.

Rigacci got her chance to shine though as this gave way to the theme from ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, quite possibly the most beautiful piece of music ever written, which in turn segued into the theme from FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, quite possible the second most beautiful piece of music ever written. And before the talented soprano left the stage (once more to incredible enthusiasm from the audience), we were treated to "The Ecstasy of Gold" from THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. In case you don't know, that's the bit at the end where Eli Wallach bolts it round a graveyard in search of the gold. It's also the tune that everyone left the Apollo singing.

We were then treated to themes from CASUALTIES OF WAR (don't know that one, but it's good) and SACCO AND VANZETTI (not seen the film but was familiar with the music - again, nice).

The final suite was a collection of themes from THE MISSION - starting with "Gabriel's Oboe", which really showcased the talents of Carlo Romano of the Sinfonietta, and ended with "In Earth as in Heaven", which is another one that you are guaranteed to know even if you've never seen the film.

By way of an encore (or rather three encores) we were treated to a reprise of "The Ecstasy of Gold" and CASUALTIES OF WAR, and a theme from QUIEMADA, which again I'm not familiar with but it's a stunning piece of music.

That was it - everyone loved it and everyone left with "The Ecstasy of Gold" stuck in their head. I've never heard quite so many bad soprano impressions in one place as I did while standing in Hammersmith tube station on Friday night.

And to give you an indication of just how enthusiastic I am about Mr Morricone's music, I had also booked a ticket for the only other date, on Saturday night.

So I got to the Apollo on Saturday night (a bit later - I'd learned my lesson) for more of the same. The only real differences were that firstly we didn't get Jonathan Ross and secondly that I had a drunken man approach me beforehand outside the entrance, who tried to explain to me that Morricone actually played for Manchester United. I didn't get it, but he thought it was funny.

He did actually have a long dark coat and an unshaven look but rather than deliberately looking like he'd walked out of a spaghetti western, I think it was just because he was a wino. Imagine Django as an unemployed Londoner and you've got the picture. I was as amazed as anyone when he turned up inside the gig later on - and then, on the way out, decided to tell everyone he was a cowboy. I must give him credit though, he did do a really good American accent.

Incidentally, there were actually a few people dressed as cowboys and Mexicans at the Saturday night gig, so I salute their efforts. The same can't be said for the would-be singers though, as once again I found myself making my way home quickly to avoid not just scary tramps but also really bad soprano impressions. Still, you have to love the enthusiasm - that's Morricone's music for you.

In case you're wondering, I did actually make it to some films while I was in London - which you expected, I'm sure - but as this as gone on long enough I'll save those thoughts for another day. Right now I'm off to practice my soprano singing.

Gobsmacking Cinema: 3 DEV ADAM (1973)

I'm not long back from my trip to the London Film Festival and I'm about to head out to Dublin for the next week for their Horrorthon festival (it is Halloween after all). So, no time to write up these festivals I've been at recently but just to keep things ticking over here's another entry in my neverending quest to expose all the normal people I know to somewhat less than normal cinema...

Have you ever heard of the Mexican hero Santo? If not, he was the masked star of a string of Mexican wrestling movies in the 60s and 70s. Yes, there really was such a genre of movie, and I guess it inspired the recent Jack Black film NACHO LIBRE. Which I won't be seeing, by the way. It looks awful. But I digress.

I've watched a few Mexican wrestling movies (a couple of Santo films and the excellently-titled NEUTRON VS THE DEATH ROBOTS) and enjoyed them a lot (usually they involve a hero fighting some outlandish criminals such as mad scientists or aliens and winning by carrying out some great wrestling moves), but I didn't think for one moment that they would possibly be popular enough for someone to actually rip them off.

And yet Santo does make what I assume is a totally unauthorised appearance in the mad Turkish film 3 DEV ADAM (translated as 3 MIGHTY MEN or something like that). But that's not the worst of it. The film also rips off music from other films - I recognised snippets from the scores to SHAFT, something else that I think was by Ennio Morricone but I couldn't remember which film, and what I thought might have been DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER.

And yet that still isn't the cheekiest aspect of it all. Check this out for a concept.

Santo and his best mate Captain America - yes, that's right, the Marvel superhero, here played by a dark-haired Turk in what can only be described as a slight departure from his comic book image - are sent on a mission to fight an evil supervillain who is flooding the economy with fake currency, torturing and killing people and also laughing in a really maniacal way.

Oh, did I mention that the villain happens to be called the Spider, and bears a not insignificant similarity to a certain wall-crawling Marvel superhero? Imagine Spider-man was a really nasty guy with an evil laugh, his costume was more homemade looking (and slightly green) and he liked torturing people in really amusing ways... and you have an idea what the villain in question looks like. Also, he has long hair which pokes out from the eye holes in his mask, giving the impression of having huge, comical eyebrows.

This shameless blend of stolen material all comes together in a no-budget kaleidoscope of badly dubbed dialogue, poorly-choreographed and unconvincing fight scenes and other such eye-popping crapness as a scene in which a man is tortured by having a big tube held up to his face with a couple of rats entering from the other side.

There are some scenes that transcend the crapness to become something truly special however. The finale in particular has Captain America seeing off several men who all wear the aforementioned cheapo Spider-man costume, only for a new one to pop up, laughing menacingly, every time one is felled. This might be annoying in a more serious film, but here it becomes side-splittingly hilarious, and sets up the rather bizarre closing scene of the film.

Turkish cinema of the 70s and 80s is a wacky world of rip-offs and weirdness and this is a great place to start off. After all, in which other movie could you see both Santo fighting a bunch of Karate experts AND Spider-man strangling a woman in the shower? Unless Sam Raimi has been doing an awful lot of drugs on the set of SPIDER-MAN 3, I suspect 3 DEV ADAM is probably the only candidate.

"I want my fifty women!"

I love spaghetti westerns. Absolutely LOVE them. Despite the western being the quintessential American movie genre, I could count on the fingers of one hand (as it hovers over my holster) the number of American westerns I've seen. At the time of writing this, I've never seen a single John Wayne movie in my life.

Yet I've lost count of how many spaghetti westerns I've watched (or Euro-westerns if you want to be technical about it), although I can't put my finger on exactly what it is I love about them. It's true that the various Sergio Leone films are probably the best and certainly the most famous examples of the Euro-western and, together with Sergio Corbucci's DJANGO, provided the template for every spaghetti western that followed. However, despite the fact that the five hundred or so films that came after DJANGO and A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS essentially continued to rehash the same stories and characters, something about them works for me.

They're formulaic, certainly, but it's a winning formula so I'm not complaining. The stories only ever seem to be about one of three things - greed, revenge... or both. The main character, fifty percent of the time, will be an unshaven clone of Eastwood or DJANGO's Franco Nero, a mysterious stranger who drifts into town, does a good deed, then disappears again. The rest of the time, he'll be some young lad who's seen a member of his family murdered or has been double-crossed and left in jail for ten years and now wants revenge.

Greed, murdered friends and family, revenge, double-crosses, shoot-out finales, fast and exceptionally improbable shootings, bar brawls, close-ups on people's eyes while they try to look menacing, sweeping desert vistas, badly dubbed accents, Morricone-esque scores... all the hallmarks of the spaghetti western.

Alas, this is also why they've never popped up in my blog before now. For as much as I love them, the formulaic slavery to genre standards makes it increasingly difficult to say anything new about them, particularly when you watch as many as I do.

Every so often though, one of them will come along that's just a little bit different - and so, with that in mind, the first spaghetti western to get its own write-up in the Freakpit is an oddball effort from director Ferdinando Baldi. Made in 1971, when hundreds of these things had already been churned out, BLINDMAN goes just that little bit further than most.

The film stars Tony Anthony as, unusually enough, a blind gunslinger. Yep, blind. Anthony was never the most menacing of the spaghetti shootists (and is even less so when blind), but then the rest of those guys didn't Anthony's level of involvement in the films either. Having already plagiarsed - sorry, I mean paid homage to Leone's films with the very, very similar films A STRANGER IN TOWN and THE STRANGER RETURNS, Anthony once again supplied the story here (as well as co-producing), clearly taking his inspiration from elsewhere this time. The title character was a spaghetti western take on the Japanese movie hero Zatoichi, himself a blind swordsman (and subject of a stunning remake a few years back). Anthony had looked to other films for his inspiration once more, but since Leone himself owed a debt to Kurosawa's YOJIMBO, I guess there was no shame in Anthony looking east as well.

Another Leone rip-off this certainly wasn't though. Very few spaghetti westerns can be said to be totally unlike any others, but BLINDMAN makes a good job of setting itself apart.

For one thing, Stelvio Cipriani's score may resemble Morricone's in parts but also goes into slightly funkier territory, as well as introducing a crazy screeching chorus too. Just as the music goes nuts, so too the film takes on a lighter tone in places, with more one-liners and scenes being played for laughs (the title character asks for directions and informs the person to show his horse, who promptly heads off in that direction). The comedy was not quite as over the top as it would become in later years though, when the comedy spaghetti western marked the death knell of the genre in the mid-70s.

The plot concerns the title character's attempt to lead fifty women across the desert to a bunch of workers who are looking forward to their, er, services. Yep, that kind of woman. Unfortunately for him, someone takes off with his women, leading to the wonderfully crazy tagline on the poster:

Blindman, Blindman, what did he do?

Stole fifty women that belong to you!

The brief plot summary I've given above probably tells you all you need to know about the film's attitude to women. The sleazy mysogeny that runs through the film would probably still give the BBFC a headache today, assuming anyone could be bothered releasing the film in the UK (thank you Koch Media in Germany for releasing this one - and in fact, the film was rejected by the BBFC when originally submitted in 1972, only being passed a few months later with an "X" certificate with cuts having been made). This attitude is also reflected in the startling amount of nudity on show.

That might not seem like a big deal in this day and age but it actually stands out significantly given that unlike most other exploitation genres to have come out of Italy in the years since, spaghetti westerns rarely featured nudity. In fact, the only other examples I can think of off the top of my head are SABATA and EXECUTION and to be honest you'd need to employ some pretty accurate use of the freeze-frame button to even see those examples. That's what I'm told, anyway.

I suppose this is the kind of thing that I'm talking about when I mention that BLINDMAN goes a little further than most. That's true of other aspects of the film as well - it features one use of a certain four letter word that has become a lot more common in films these days but again was rare in spaghetti westerns. And then there's the violence.

Spaghetti westerns have always featured violent shootouts, but the shootings in BLINDMAN are a little more graphic than most, and the fate of the villain is as grim as anything seen in the genre. In fact, the final showdown is the closest the film comes to regular spaghetti territory, even down to the Morricone-style accompaniment and obligatory dust storm. Even here, however, the showdown goes off into slightly darker territory that sets it apart from the rest (for one thing, it takes place in a deserted graveyard full of crosses - nice).

Oh yeah, there's one other minor detail. It's got Ringo Starr in it. Yes, that really is him you see above. He plays a Mexican villain named Candy. You just couldn't make it up. It's tough deciding what's more bizarre - the fact that Ringo Starr is even in the film, the fact that he's playing a Mexican or the fact that someone thought a villain should be called Candy.

So, a Scouse-Mexican bandit named Candy, plenty of gratuitous nudity and a healthy dose of gunfights and violence. I still can't decide whether it's a risible piece of sleaze or one of the best films ever.

NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS (1976)

In the final installment of the BLIND DEAD series, the action returns to dry land, meaning (YES!) more zombies on horses.

NIGHT OF THE SEAGULLS is a rehash of everything that's gone before but in doing so it returns the film to its roots and serves up plenty of what made it so enjoyable to begin with.

The plot, such as it is this time, concerns a doctor and his wife who move to a small seaside village where it just so happens that every seven years they sacrifice seven virgins in order to appease those nasty knights. And wouldn't you know it, just as sure as I always manage to arrive at the station in the morning just as my train is departing, so these poor folks have arrived just as the latest round of murders is hitting its stride.

Naturally, being a fine pair of horror cliches, er, sorry, I mean a fine pair of upstanding citizens, the couple do their best to figure out what's going on and save the next poor sacrificial girl. This of course upsets the locals, meaning we now have angry locals and horse-riding zombies after them. Some mornings you just wish you'd never got out of bed.

Although it a mish-mash of previously used plot elements (including another disfigured outcast picked on by the locals) and the ending is a bit contrived, it delivers everything you expect and provides a far more fitting conclusion to the series than GHOST GALLEON would have done. It still can't quite match the first two films, but at least it has slow-motion horse-riding zombies, and there's nothing cooler than that in the history of cinema. Well, except maybe that scene in ZOMBIE FLESH EATERS where a semi-naked woman watches in terror while a zombie wrestles a shark. They don't make them like that anymore. With good reason, the cynics might say.

That concludes my look at these wonderful films. If you've made it all the way through this series of blog entries then you probably either already know these films or else you're just one of my colleagues from work who only reads this crap to humour me.

If however you're a casual horror fan who was thinking about investigating these films then I urge you to do so, as they can be picked up pretty cheaply (the set is currently retailing for £23 at play.com as I type this).

A word of warning for the purists though - aside from the UK set being missing a couple of features that are in the US box set, the BBFC demanded several seconds of cuts to the first film for its UK release, the objection being to one particular scene in which one of the nastier characters forces himself on a woman. You can argue about whether the BBFC are right to make these cuts (they're not) but then again you can also argue about whether such a scene was required in the first place (equally doubtful). But at the end of the day it's only a few seconds and it's still a bargain buy for a bunch of horse-riding zombies.

Oh yeah, did I mention the horse-riding zombies at all?