Bay of Blood

1971 Italian horror movie

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A bunch of people murder each other in an effort to inherit an island. The island isn't very happy about it.

This was on my radar because of its bitchin' alternate title--Twitch of the Death Nerve. Apparently, this has more alternate titles than any other movie which I guess is something. Here they are:

Carnage
Bloodbath (or Blood Bath)
Bloodbath Bay of Death
The Odor of Flesh
Before the Fact
The Antecedent
The Last House on the Left, Part II (Note: It has nothing to do with The Last House on the Left.)
New House on the Left
Ecology of a Crime
Chain Reaction


Ok, most of them are in other languages, but trust me, there's a lot of them. And that's not counting a few working titles--The Stench of Flesh, Thus Do We Live to Be Evil, and That Will Teach Them to Be Bad. This movie's also notable as being a hugely influential slasher film, spawning films (for better or worse) like Halloween and the Friday the 13th franchise. The latter, which I've never really had much interest in, apparently borrows a few murderous acts from Bava shot-by-shot. What makes this movie a little more interesting than a lot of crappy slasher flicks that follow it is in one of those alternate titles--Ecology of a Crime. One could look at all the violence of this thing and wonder what's wrong with people, but the real villain might be a little sneakier than just something like human nature or greed. There are mysterious forces at play here, right up until the shocking conclusion which works as black comedy perfection and a final karmic exclamation point. This is very cheaply produced, but there are some great stylistic touches, like the slowing wheelchair wheel in the aftermath of the first murder. There's also some first-person stuff that predicts the opening sequence of Halloween. Oh, and there's German actress Brigitte Skay playing Brunhilda, a character you get to see every inch of if you're into that sort of thing. Lots of this is gruesome with its fair share of decapitation, impaling, slicing, and dicing. This could use better pacing, but Bava does a lot with a little and adds a little depth to the violent genre. And that ending!

Shane Watches a Bad Movie on Facebook with Friends: Burial Ground: The Nights of Terror

1981 Italian zombie movie

Rating: 12/20 (Libby: 4/20; Fred: 6/20; Carrie: 12/20)

Plot: Couples look for a good time at a creepy mansion but encounter zombies.

Don't get me wrong. The zombies in this are as creepy as zombies get. They're in various stages of decay, and a lot of them have wiggling maggots on their faces. They move like zombies should, feast on human flesh, and shamble out of unexpected places beautifully. But they are nowhere close to the creepiest thing about this Italian schlocker. No, that would be Peter Bark, the "unnerving Italian midget thespian" (according to imdb.com) who plays a twelve-year-old boy in this movie. His countenance and dubbed voice are creepy enough, but when he begins to sexually assault his mother? It's the stuff of nightmares. The problem with this movie isn't a lack of horrifying or suspenseful moments because once it gets going, really early in the proceedings, it's filled with horrifying and suspenseful moments. The problem is more with the storytelling, mainly that it doesn't have very much of it. The zombies aren't explained until the end with a quoted "profecy" that has more than one typographical error. And it's not exactly an explanation either. The human characters are a lot dumber than the zombies which doesn't make any sense. These are zombies that can use power tools. The humans? I'm not sure they can. I know one doesn't seem able to use a pitchfork. This festers with a lot of really nice horror movie moments including one that involves monks, and anybody popping it in for the gore will probably be satisfied. For me, it's the "unnerving" Peter Bark that I won't be able to shake out of my head.

Directed by Andrea Bianchi. It's a movie I liked enough to check out something else by him, maybe Strip Nude for Your Killer which was released six years earlier. That title's got some serious potential.

Planet of Vampires

1965 spaghetti science fiction

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A strange planet influences a space crew.

Alien seems to borrow a bit from this science fiction/light-horror movie made by Italian maestro Mario Bava. You have to look past a flaky story, bad dubbing, and bad acting from actors who just look too generic to be astronauts, and if you focus on the mumbo-jumbo pseudo-scientific stuff that they say in this thing, you'll be distracted. So don't pay attention to any of that. Or the fake blood. Instead, watch this for the cool visuals--great sets, superfluous dry ice usage, backwards fog drift, awesome spaceship interiors, giant skeletons, moody planet landscapes, grave emergence. Combined with some creepy synthesizer music, a menacing alien voice, and cool space suits complete with yellow motorcycle helmets, it adds up to something atmospheric and fun to watch. I wondered since hearing about this movie what existential angst and general moodiness Bava could bring to the sci-fi genre, and this wasn't disappointing even though so much of what happens with the characters makes very little sense. I did like that ending a lot though.

The Libertine

 1968 sexy Italian movie

Rating: 13/20

Plot: A widow discovers that her late husband had an apartment rented solely for extracurricular shenanigans and decides to use it to explore her own sexuality.

I'm now a big fan of Catherine Spaak and her versatile hair. She's really good here though there's not nearly as much nudity as you'd expect from this. Or maybe from these other posters:

I really need to check out more Catherine Spaak movies though. This isn't really a funny movie at all. It's cute, more than a little dated. It's got a little bit of style but looks cheaply produced. There is a really cute little song that runs throughout the movie. Aside from Spaak's nice performance, a guy named Renzo Montagnani is really good as Fabrizio. I'm not sure what the message for women is here, probably because I'm not a woman living in the late-60s, but I'm sure there's some kind of feminist idea here. Or maybe not since a male wrote the original story, a male wrote the screenplay, and a male directed the thing.

This has nothing to do with the Johnny Depp movie, by the way.

Starcrash

 

 

1978 Star Wars rip-off

 

Rating: 4/20

 

Plot: Sexy sexy space smuggler Stella Star, her robot friend, her mysterious and powerful friend Akton, and David Hasselhoff have to save the galaxy from an evil "count" who is building a weapon that can destroy stars or something. The weapon, the mightiest weapon according to Count Zarth, is called the Doom Machine. Nope, I'm not making that up.

 

I apologize for the flimsy plot synopsis, but I never really had a clue what was going on in this movie. I was enormously entertained by this for a variety or reasons that I'll mention below, but I had no luck following a story. I'm fairly positive that the makers of this were working from a script to A New Hope that had been very poorly translated into Italian or partially consumed in a fire or maybe both. Or maybe they were just making the whole thing up as they went. That's more likely. Director/co-writer Luigi Cozzi probably just said, "Forget a script! Let's just build a bunch of shit and get this thing rolling! Let's make us some Star Wars money!" The movie opens with a shot of the underside of a passing space ship. Doesn't that sound familiar? Seriously, you're ripping off the first shot of Star Wars? I'm surprised there wasn't a scrolling backstory against a background of stars. Of course, Cozzi's spaceships don't look as realistic or as iconic as Lucas's, but his outer space is definitely a lot more colorful. It looks like it might have been made with a Light Brite actually with all kinds of colorful stars. There's also a robot, voiced by Hamilton Camp who played Mr. Margolies in an episode of Saved by the Bell which allows my mind to connect Marjoe Gortner and Elizabeth Berkley in my head, and that robot provides comic relief that makes the C3PO of the prequels seem like a comic genius. The robot moves like a less-stiff version of C3PO, and says things (in a Southern accent) like "Every time I go into hyperspace, I get nervous" which almost seem directly lifted from Lucas's scripts. He also says, "Time for a little robot chauvenism," at one point which made me wonder if the writers of this knew what "chauvenism" means. Oh, and my favorite fake-C3PO line--"Look! He's here! There's his holographic image!" Another Star Wars-inspired line--"Let's hope this star buggy stays together." And then there's the big reveal--that Marjoe Gortner's character has force-like abilities. He can blind people with his eyes, heal people, see into the future, absorb lasers and shoot them back out his palms, etc. And, of course, during one brilliant fight scene with some stop-motion robot "guardians" (stop motion that would make Harryhausen piss himself!), they give Marjoe a lightsaber so that he can wipe out troglodytes. There's an image I don't have to badass-up with superlatives--Marjoe Gortner wiping out troglodytes with a lightsaber. There's also a Death-Star-esque space battle at the end but the fight ends up more on the inside of ships with torpedoes filled with soldiers being utilized and engaging in laser battles where a lot of characters scream, "Kill! Kill!" Maybe those are robots, too. Of course, this is probably superior to any Star Wars film because of the eye candy that is Caroline Munro. I might have to work my way through her filmography. She plays Stella, and although she's not naked as much as Barbarella, a few of her fashion choices (and there are a ton of wardrobe changes) recall that character. Anyway, lots to love in this one. Marjoe actually gets top billing, and from the get-go, you can tell it's going to be a special performance. The first shot of him in the space ship with that big curly hair of his and these wide eyes is classic. I'm going to go ahead and call it the most iconic moment in sci-fi movie history. I'm pretty sure he's stoned throughout the filming of this movie, and I really like how he says "robot" in this. And this scene, in which he plays with a little laser thing by himself for no reason whatsoever, might be my favorite thing ever:

 

I think he's using the force there, but I'm not sure. That was right before his fight with the bald guy (Thor--played by Robert Tessier) which is one of the worst fight scenes ever. And then there's his character's knowledge of the future which is one of those things that manage to make the rest of the movie completely pointless, like Superman flying around the earth really fast. Of course, Cozzi had that covered with this dialogue:

Stella: Why didn't you tell me [that this would happen, or something]?
Marjoe (trippin'): You would have tried to change the future, add that's against the law.

Ahh, I see. Other than Marjoe and the aforementioned Munro, you also get big sexy David Hasselhoff who really gets to show off his acting chops with lines like "This is an energy shield mask!" Christopher Plummer, in one of his proudest and apparently more sleepy moments, plays the Emperor, and Joe Spinell chews it up as the bad guy. "Dooooooom machine," he says, with a gigantic wave of his hand. And the greatest weapon might actually be his bitchin' goatee instead of any doom machine. There are all kinds of trippy effects (a tentacle head with a lava lamp behind it, the robot going out of control while circuits fail as the ship travels through a Pink Floyd stage backdrop), a flying caveman attack that is more thrilling than anything in Star Wars, and all those Stella Star costumes which also make this well worth watching. And it's a lot funnier than Spaceballs.

 



Django Kill. . .If You Live, Shoot!

1967 spaghetti western

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A guy who might not even be named Django and his peeps steal some bags of gold dust and are immediately double-crossed and left for dead. With the help of two of the fakest-looking Injuns in the history of world cinema, the guy survives and heads to a nearby town where the double-crossers have already been executed. He sticks around to retrieve his gold.

This oddly-titled spaghetti western has nothing to do with any other Django movie, including this one. This isn't quite the great movie I've waited patiently to see since writing its title on my "Movies I'm Waiting Patiently to See" list, but it's weird enough to at least be interesting for the duration. It's also not as graphically violent as I had been led to believe which makes me wonder if I watched some kind of watered-down edited version. Wikipedia quotes some writers who claim it's "the most brutally violent spaghetti western ever made" and it's got "truly horrendous scenes." There's some bloody weirdness that might have been a shock in the late-60's. There's the extraction of some golden bullets, a scalping, the demise of a guy named either Mr. Zorro or Mr. Sorrow. Then, there's just some general weirdness--a great entrance into a town that "sure don't look like heaven" with weird singing troll children, a crippled rat, a flash of a dress; gay bodyguards in matching black outfits; that aforementioned non-convincing Indian who kind of looks like Dudley Moore in a bad wig; a whiskey-drinking parrot; the use of vampire bats and lizards in an attempt to off our anti-hero instead of just shooting him, almost like they're villains from the old Batman t.v. show or something. Speaking of our hero, a guy who isn't even named Django, he's played by Tomas Milian who is probably good here just because he kind of looks like Franco Nero. A solid score compliments the odd, convoluted, and incoherent meanderings typical of a lot of your Italian westerns. This isn't top shelf stuff exactly and not worth being all that excited about, but it's a nifty enough little oddity.

Italian Spiderman

2007 parody

Rating: n/r

Plot: The evil Captain Maximum is trying to get his hands on an asteroid that has cloning power, and it's up to Italian Spiderman to save the day. Italian Spiderman is chubby.

And then I reached the point in my life where I was watching Italian Spiderman. This sentence will end a chapter in my unauthorized autobiography, and if anybody gets that far in the book (it will be very poorly written, probably with way too many parenthetical asides), they will know that the next chapter will be a major turning point in my life. This is a choppy but really pretty clever parody of foreign films that nab Western superheros or action stars for use in their own movies. Yeah, they're looking at you here, Turkey. Apparently, there were a lot of these types of movies--a few Spidermans, a handful of Supermans. I've seen clips, and those seem like parodies themselves. Some of this, just as you'd expect from a parody of something that is already stupid, gets too stupid. There's a scene where Italian Spiderman and Captain Maximum have a surfing competition, for example. Still, Italian Spiderman is quite a bit of fun and surprisingly clever. The titular superhero doesn't seem to have superpowers. He's overweight, he womanizes, and he smokes, so I'm not sure he's the best role model for the youth of Italy. He does tell you to respect women though. Of course, that is during a scene in which he is punching one, but still. After some cool old-school 70's opening credits featuring women with machine guns, you get a fastly-paced story that in no way takes itself or anything else seriously. Obvious dummies, over-goofed expressions, a fight between the hero and a crocodile (maybe an alligator) man, bad guys in Mexican wrestling masks. It's sleazy psychedelica. It's all very episodic, likely because this was released in installments over the Internet, but that only adds to the charm. And the confusion. I enjoyed the product placement--Il Gallo cigarettes which apparently come from a squeezed chicken. Speaking of chickens, check out this scene:

See? I told you he was chubby. That's right after the fight with the alligator (or crocodile) man. The costume for that villain was probably made by the same guy who made the tiger man costume in Bruce Lee's posthumous Game of Death II. Here's another scene featuring the main villain, the evil surfing Captain Maximum. I'm only showing you this because I want you to see what my life has become. Consider it some kind of warning.

And then there's this:

Italian Spiderman! He's not your dad's Spiderman! He's not friendly, and I don't think you'd want him anywhere near your neighborhood. Unless a crocodile (alligator?) man or thugs in luche libre masks were harrassing you and your neighbors.

Monster Dog

1984 werewolf movie

Rating: 7/20

Plot: Vince Raven returns to his childhood home to record a rock 'n' roll video with his entourage. Monster dogs happen!

Well, I couldn't pass up an Italian horror movie with a very-badly-dubbed Alice Cooper. The monster dog action is bookended with a pretty bitchin' song where Cooper rhymes "Billy the Kid" with "Jack the Rip-per" which, while at the time, I thought was pretty silly is something that I now realize is pure genius. I was really thrown off every time the characters called their van a camper. It must be an Italian thing. The dubbing is terrible in this. It has this weird cadence but perfectly matches the actors' lips, so it must be their actual off-rhythm. At one point, I wondered if the dubbing was making this movie worse than it actually was, but then I remembered what the monster dog looked like. Yeah, it's kind of like how it looks on the poster. There's also a random bloody guy running around who delivers these ominous but vague and ultimately befuddling threats on behalf of the monster dog. I laughed during a scene where he wonders off after talking to Vince Raven and his pals and shakes the bushes a little before Vince casually says, "The dogs must have attacked him." I also liked these giggling werewolf hunters, one who says, "I'm going to shoot him through the heart. . .with this silver bullet. . .that's how you kill werewolves." But that's not my favorite line. No, that would be the excited "Wow whee!" a guy yelps after spotting a tray of sandwiches. Warren Zevon is also in this movie and plays a character who is made sick to his stomach by queers and eventually gets it when he somehow manages to catch himself on fire. One thing I really have come to appreciate in movies is artwork created for the film, and this has a couple good ones:

I've got no clue what's going on in this last one, but if I saw that hanging on the wall of somebody's house, I'd either leave or ask to move in. Or look out for a monster dog!

Titanic: The Legend Goes On...

2000 abomination

Rating: 2/20

Plot: Apparently, this is based on the true story of an actual boat called Titanic that ran into an iceberg and sank. Except this version has talking mice and rapping dogs.

I shit you not, dear readers! Rapping dogs. Not only are they rapping (poorly) on a ship that sank, oh, roughly sixty-seven years before rap music even existed (that's right, suckers, I'm throwing credit to "Rappers Delight" and the Sugarhill Gang), but they are doing their thing doggy style in front of a brick wall, a kind of wall I'm not sure they had on the RMS Titanic, that has a piece of paper with the words "rap music" written on it. This follows a classic line, perhaps a historically classic line but I'll have to do some research on the Titanic tragedy to know for sure, uttered by one of the mice: "If it wasn't for you, I would have ended up in somebody else's digestion!" One of the rapping dogs is carrying a boom box which I'm not sure was invented by 1912 either. I'm not sure how many people were in the room where this scene of the movie was planned and actually decided it was a good idea, but they might as well have gone down in one of those submarine things with James Cameron, found a few victims of the tragedy, brought them back to the surface, strapped them to an iceberg, and pointed and laughed at them. It would have been less offensive maybe, unless Celine Dion was invited. Speaking of her--there might be a song in this that is worse than that grating song from Cameron's little boat movie. I'll call it the "Yi yi yi ya ya, You're in My Blood, You're in My Blood" song. Actually, it's not only worse than the Celine Dion song (which I call "Goo La Doo La Gooly Doo")--it might be worse than the Titanic tragedy itself. This thing is poorly animated with out-of-proportioned characters, on-screen jitters, and stiff backgrounds. And most of the characters seem ripped from other movies--loads of Disney, Speedy Gonzalez, An American Tale, Home Alone maybe. Lots of stereotypes, too, the kind you just don't get to see much since they stopped showing the Warner Brothers cartoons. Appalachia, Jews, Mexican. The sound and translation work are equally embarrassing, with some lines not making much sense at all and some lines being repeated in this almost trippy way. It's bad in bewildering ways, probably (taking into account the tastelessness of the whole thing) the worst cartoon that I've ever seen.

Oprah Movie Club: Once Upon a Time in the West

1968 Western

Rating: 19/20

Plot: Some guy who might have a name travels the Wild West in search of some talented musicians to complete a band he wants to start--The Belt and Suspenders Blues Band. At the beginning of our story, he's got himself on lead harmonica, and all he needs to complete the band are a back-up harmonica, a gitfiddle, a drummer, a stand-up bass, a washboard, a bottle blower, a harpist, a bassoonist, a tromboner, another tromboner, an accordionist, a piano player, a lead singer, four mildly-attractive women for back-up singers, a beat-box, and another back-up harmonica player. Meanwhile, a guy who's usually a good guy but in this movie is a bad guy has been sent by a guy with his own train to scare a nerd with "the worst hair west of the Mississippi" and either does a really poor job or a really good job. Then, his wife--Boobsy McWhoresalot--shows up and starts distracting everybody. She realizes that her honeymoon is likely ruined and makes some coffee. A bunch of ugly guys are shot, and it all builds up to a thrilling climax when a dying man pats Boobsy on her sweet sweet behind.

"How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders?"

See, I didn't remember this movie had a character who wore both a belt and suspenders. There was a line in Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole about belts and suspenders and a line in a novel that will remain unfinished because I'm too much of a dumbass to write a stinking chapter of it with a character who wears both. I might need a "belt and suspenders" blog label. Can you imagine Nicolas Cage playing a character who wore both a belt and suspenders? Pants would literally be shat!

Did everybody but me know that Dario Argento co-wrote this?

There's more goodness in the first fifteen minutes of this thing than most directors can dream of putting together in their entire careers. Bird taunting, whistling metal, a stutterer, veins on a dark hand, a ticket flying right into my living room. Under the direction of Leone, I'm pretty sure I could have watched these characters sit around and do absolutely nothing for two hours and forty minutes or so, all scenery and glorious sound effects. I'm not sure who's decision it was--Morricone's or Leone's--to not have music over the opening scene at the train station. If it was the composer's decision, this might be his best work. And that's saying a ton. This movie doesn't need to go anywhere. You've got a screen packed with details, and you just want to absorb it all. There are chunks of this movie where it's barely a moving picture. The pace is leisurely, and that allows us to just savor it. It's more a summertime movie pace, but it's the kind of pace I love, especially when there's so much to look at. Of course, contrast the overall pace to the blink-and-you-miss-it climactic gun fight.

I also love the character's dynamics and the often confusing relationships. They operate with these unwritten rules, this code that shows that Leone's version of the Wild West has this underlying structure. In fact, you almost wonder what samurai movie Leone lifted the story and its characters from. The characters, by the way, are just so complete. You don't need their back stories. All it takes a few moments on the screen and a few lines of dialogue and you just get them. Bronson ain't Eastwood, but everything he says is so cool. Fonda makes a great bad guy (love his sinner's smile), and Claudia Cardinale is so cute that I'll likely dream about patting her behind myself. Robards' Cheyenne is a complex and tragic figure. And they all get their own music! The periphery characters fill in the gaps. As Scott commented (premature commentation, by the way, but I'll allow it), Elam's "wandering eye" is a nice little detail, but really all of these characters' faces twitch or contort in ways that mine can't. I should know because I spent some time in front of the mirror trying to look tough after watching this movie. Leone's really put together a Who's-Who of Grizzled Guys. He sure loves his close-ups.

My favorite moment: Fonda searching Morton's train while the camera pans over a ground littered with dead bodies. When Fonda exits, it's almost enough to convince you that Leone was the greatest director ever. As I type this, I can think of about fifteen other favorite moments or shots in this.

This is a big movie, successful as a Western revenge epic or as an ode (or maybe an elegy) to the American West. Poetic and shockingly beautiful.

I should add that the way Charles Bronson holds that harmonica is perfect.

Death Rides a Horse

1967 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: Oh, snap! Young Bill watches a gang of Wild West thugs kill off his ma, his pa, and his sister. Bill's spared, becomes a sharpshooter, and looks for revenge, a dish which is adequately served tepid. Meanwhile, Lee Van Cleef finishes an extended time in prison and is looking for the same people. They get in each other's way.

There's no shortage of these awesome Spaghetti Westerns. And Lee Van Cleef has no shortage of cool, especially when he gets to play a tough and complicated character like this guy. John Phillip Law can barely keep up. He's charming, probably plays his character too naive, and sells "tough cowboy" about as well as Alan Ladd. This has a nice assortment of bad guys, and I like how they all follow this samurai-like code despite being, you know, bad guys. And like a lot of Westerns made in Italy, this has plenty of left-field twists. And the Morricone? The main theme is so big that Quentin Tarantino didn't have to steal for Kill Bill; no, "Death Rides a Horse" pushed its way into the production and demanded to be a part of The Bride's tale of revenge. So powerful, something that really grabs at your arm hairs. Speaking of that Bill, this Bill's got more than a little in common with that Uma, enough so you get the feeling Tarantino drew some inspiration from this. This one's got a brutal beginning to set up a nice revenge tale, one with more quick zooms on these characters' gnarled faces than you're likely to see in your average kung-fu revenge flick. Definitely recommended for fans of the genre. My favorite scene: three notes played by the piano man.

Fists in the Pocket

1965 family film

Rating: 16/20

Plot: An epileptic young man named Ale decides to murder everybody in his family in order to give his brother a chance to live a normal life.

This is strange little Italian movie that reminds me quite a bit like that other Italian movie. At the center of things is Lou Castel and his performance as the bad (or good, depending on how you look at things) brother. Even during his calmer scenes, you can see a lot of craziness burbling beneath the surface. Of course, the real fun is watching him come completely unhinged. His performance is really mesmerizing and my eyes were just glued to him. Unless Paola Pitagora, his character's sister, is on the screen because my eyes really enjoyed watching her for different reasons. This bleak and cynical family drama is shot in an interesting way with Bellocchio taking advantage of the architecture and geography to help illustrate the family dynamics and situations. They family leaves on a cliff which works to not only create some beautiful shots but as a metaphor. I also liked an early dinner sequence with some creepy editing and choreography really paints a picture of what this family's all about. It's a picture that's worth a thousand words as all these slight movements give you this strong impression that things ain't right with these people. Morricone's score, a lot of it consisting of ghostly vocals and dropping things, is also very effective. This had some slow moments and a confusing relationship between Ale and his hot, hot sister, but it's still a nice feel-bad picture of a dysfunctional family.

Pinocchio

2002 family fun

Rating: 2/20 (Dylan: 0/20; Emma: .5/20; Abbey: 20/20)

Plot: Pinocchio, as made by mentally challenged people.

"Who stole the salami?"

This may be the worst movie ever. Unless watching Roberto Benigni hop around like he's doing on the poster, only with less blue, is your cup of Pinocchio, you're not going to like this. Abbey claims to have liked it, but this might just confirm my theory that she's on drugs. At the 21 minute mark, Dylan started screaming in anger and ran upstairs. I continued watching but passed out and woke up later with the hair on half my head shaven. This is an ugly and stupid movie without a single redeeming quality. I will say this: We watched a dubbed version that is available on Netflix, and it was really tackily done. Sometimes, that can be comical; here, it's enough to make one old guy sick and a younger guy scream in anger and run off. Add to that some of the worst special effects you'll find. It's almost like there were real special effects, like Italian special effects or something, but the producers didn't think that Americans would understand them and dubbed them with really cheap C-studio special effects. A loud and painful movie.

Here's the question that I'm left with: What the hell is a puppet in Italy? Or a boy? Because a 50-year-old Roberto Benigni looked like neither. I think "puppet" must mean "ornery old man" or something over there. Or "one who inflicts great amounts of torment and pain." Or "character who is going to make your career much harder to defend to my friends."

Keoma

1976 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 15/20

Plot: Keoma, an adopted half-Injun (is that politically correct?) returns after the Civil War to find that his daddy is no longer the town big-wig and that his three corrupt half-brothers are in-cahoots with the mean guy who's the new town big-wig. Plague victims are shunned and sent to die. Keoma rescues one of them, a pregnant woman, and pisses off everybody. A whole lot of people die in slow-motion.

Another filthy cool spaghetti Western featuring the great Franco Nero with perhaps an overuse of Peckinpah-style slo-mo spills from horses or rooftops and a great tone. But I'm going to start with the bad or ugly in this otherwise good film--the music. There's a song performed by a woman who screeches like an inebriated Joan Baez and a guy who sounds like a guy who liquified and then drank a bunch of Leonard Cohen records. The song runs intermittently throughout the movie's duration and works kind of like a Greek chorus where the "singers" tell you exactly what just happened in case you somehow missed it or maybe what the characters are thinking. It's unnecessary and annoying. "Now Keoma has to ride into town to face his brothers." Yeah, Joan Baez, I know. I'm watching the same movie you are! Maybe if I was vision impaired, I would have appreciated that sort of thing. Or maybe I would have just shoved pencils in my ears. Other than that, this is good stuff. I like the mysterious tone, and Castellari, a director I've never heard of, uses sound effects and classic Western shots that take advantage of great scenery to create wonderful atmosphere. He uses some unnatural shots that show the characters framed by debris and dilapidated buildings, and during a climactic shoot-out--one of several--he eliminates all of the sound except for a moaning woman and the wind. Awesome. Keoma the half-breed (wait, why isn't this an offensive word?) is a cool character, not invincible and tortured not only by all the stuff that happens to him in the numerous flashbacks but by his future. And I like how he does this pointing thing that must have inspired Hulk Hogan as he was creating his wrastler persona. There's also this cool shot you'd only get in a spaghetti Western where Keoma tells his four enemies that he has four bullets. He holds up four fingers to illustrate. Then, he counts and drops his fingers to reveal the characters he's about to shoot. This movie also has a guy who looks like Colonel Sanders, and a scene where a guy with the whitest teeth in the Wild West gives a black guy's boot a golden shower. Definitely worth watching for fans of the genre even though that song will make you bleed from the ears. And not in a good way.

The Great Silence

1968 Spaghetti Western

Rating: 17/20

Plot: In blizzardy Utah in the late 1800s, bounty hunters run amok, bringing in loads of dead outlaws for financial gain. The titular mute doesn't like them very much and finds ways of getting them mad enough to draw their guns so that he can shoot them in self defense. One widow tries to get Silence to kill a bounty hunter named Loco who shot her husband.

The Great Silence is one of those westerns where the setting is almost more important than the characters. The hills these hills inhabit are drowned in snow, and watching these horses trudge through the mounds of white is impressive. The mute good guy played by Jean-Louis Trintignant is fine as a sort of Eastwood Man-With-No-Name-But-With-a-Nickname. Apparently he was a mute because the actor would only take the role if he didn't have any lines to learn. But he's a cool character with a cool gun. Klaus Kinski dominates as Loco, however, stealing each scene with his eyes. What a great villain! The dubbing in this isn't great although I wonder if Kinski actually did the dubbing for Loco. It sort of sounded like him. I did enjoy the exaggerated dubbed chewing sounds because there's nothing like hearing a guy slurp a chicken. My favorite scene that is not at the end of the movie: a tossed match into a glass of whiskey during a poker game. Nice tension. But the end of this movie? That's what pushes it a notch higher than its Italian Western peers. It's an ending that'll leave your jaw dropping. Great Morricone score, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

The Lickerish Quartet

1970 sex comedy

Rating: 11/20

Plot: In their big fancy castle, a middle-aged married couple watch a pornographic movie with their twenty-something son. The son objects; the father cracks jokes. Eventually, they decide to get out and walk to a carnival where they enjoy the stunt driving of a trio of motorcyclists. When the female driver removes her helmet, they recognize her as one of the actresses in the movie they were watching. At least they think it's her. Naturally, they take her back to the castle, have some really awkward conversations, and then show her the pornographic movie. The next morning [Spoiler Alert!], they all have sex with her. Individually, of course, because together would just be disturbing.

Came across this title in a "Cult Movies" book, and I can't say I'm really glad I did. It drools like the 1970s, weirdly alternating between jerk-off material smuttage to pretentious dick-with-the-audience arthouse flick. It's an Italian movie, and it has the feel of one even though the dialogue's in English. The acting is stilted, forced and awkward, and the writing doesn't help the actors out much. Observe:

Girl: Who has the gun?
Father: What gun?
Girl: To do the shooting?
Father: There isn't going to be any shooting.
Girl: Of course there is.
Father: Of course there isn't!

Actually, with dialogue like that, it's hard to imagine that this isn't a comedy. An artsy erotic comedy! I actually did laugh quite a bit if you stretch your definition of "laugh" to include scrunching up one's face and saying, "What the hell?" I really liked the father's butterfly joke and its subsequent no-reaction. And I agree with the father that watching erotic movies in reverse and at a higher speed is worthy of a hearty guffaw. And how can you really hate a movie with a magic show, a motorcycle stunt scene, a spirited game of hide and seek, and a shot of a python swallowing a baby pig? You can't. I won't complain about the nudity either. Star Silvana Venturelli's easy on the eyes. The taste I can't wash out of my eyes, however, is the visual of the father and the visitor rolling most unerotically on a library floor that happens to have the definitions of sexual terms all over it. That was following the foreplay which consisted of the couple throwing books at each other and the father resenting his son. Yeah, it's that kind of movie. Awesome song during that scene though, all layered psychedelic guitar noodling. There's some neat elements here, but the pretentious camera play, random shots of feet and people falling down the stairs, World War flashbacks, and the overuse of visual motifs just scream artsy-fartsy. It was like director Radley Metzger decided he better make The Lickerish Quartet artistic or risk offending his mother and, after realizing he had no story whatsoever, decided to just befuddle the audience by blending present and past, reality and fantasy, motorcycles and shadow puppets. "See, Mom? It's not pornographic. It's Art!" Unfortunately, the pseudo-intellectual erotic mess it adds up to is no more intelligent than the erotic mess I made while watching it.

How about that tagline, by the way? "Beyond the physical edge. . ."

Cannibal Holocaust

1980 first "found footage" film

Rating: 14/20

Plot: A quartet of cocky and shady documentarians travel to the jungles of South America to film some of the inhabitants. They never return. An anthropologist is sent to get the help of a guide and find out what happened to the kids. He finds their skulls and procures some film footage containing their last moments as something other than food. After he returns to the States, network executives, convinced that showing the footage to the masses is a good idea, watch the film with the anthropologist.

Give credit (or blame?) this for the Blair Witches and Paranormal Activities of the world. And being a sort of prototype, and a low budget one at that, it's understandably imperfect, a little rough around the edges, and uneven. The found footage stuff is really a film within the film, and the outer layer is just ho-hum traditional stuff. Knowing that the found footage stuff was coming up, I couldn't stop wondering who the heck was filming the anthropologist during his journey. The found footage stuff is as gruesome as violence and horror gets in film, for better and for worse. So realistic were the scenes of death, rape, and titular cannibalism, in fact, that director Ruggero Deodato was arrested and had to show a court how a scene featuring impaling was pulled off because people actually suspected the actors and actresses were murdered. I'm not sure the scenes are that realistic, but they are brutal and realistic enough to put this firmly in the not-for-the-squeamish category. Ironically, a film-within-the-film-that-is-within-the-film (sort of) does show actual firing squad execution footage, but guess that real violence is copacetic. The most visually disturbing or cringe-worthy scene in the entire movie doesn't feature human violence at all, by the way. No, the death and subsequent devouring of a poor turtle is, and I doubt I watch something more difficult in a long, long time. I did always secretly wonder what the inside parts of a turtle looked like though. I'm not sure Deodata is trying to say anything about the media or filmmakers treatment of third world peoples or trying to expose some of society's ills or if he's just going for the shock. I suspect it's the latter, and a lot of people would find this movie to be nothing more than a repulsive, exploitative piece of trash. I can understand that view; in fact, I wonder why so much of the violence shown had to be sexual and could have done without some really unnecessary nudity. I can't say I enjoyed all of Cannibal Holocaust, but you have to give this Italian movie some credit for ingenuity and accidentally inventing a sub-genre at the same time.

If you've got the balls, take the Cannibal Holocaust challenge. I was able to watch even the most gruesome bits of this movie while eating a noodle salad, a mango, and sunflower seeds. What can you eat while watching Cannibal Holocaust?

Django

1966 spaghetti western

Rating: 16/20

Plot: A man with no name. . .no, scratch that. He has a name. Django! He walks through a muddy wasteland dragging a coffin around until he finds some Mexicans mistreating a woman. The Mexicans' fun is interrupted by some white guys, and their subsequent fun is then interrupted by Django who shoots them all. He travels to a nearby town overrun by the same gang whose members sport these KKK-esque red hoods. Django finds himself in the middle of their conflict. Lots and lots of people die.

The inspiration for at least Tarantino and Miike (see: Sukiyaki Western Django if you need proof), this is a very entertaining bloody Italian western. Franco Nero doesn't have the charisma of Clint, but he's still very good as the stoic anti-hero. The antagonists, both the guys in the red hoods and los banditos, are really just around to die. And boy, do they die. This spaghetti western has a lofty body count, and although a lot of those deaths are just guys falling down, it does have its share of sadistic organ removal and gruesome mangling. Django's got these perfect alternative Western settings. The town's a wreck and drowning in mud. I still can't figure out how a semi-important fallen-down tree got in the middle of the road there. A rickety bridge over a quicksand lake is used twice, and the whole thing ends, appropriately, in a graveyard that looks like it's been hit by an earthquake. The story's filmed competently enough, maybe not with Leone's eye but with some cool shots, and there's a fantastic theme song. I really like how director Corbucci slows things down, letting the conflict build momentum naturally. There's a scene late in the film where Django is sneaking around. Arguably, it goes on too long, but I liked how it builds some tension and makes the title character look clever. Same goes for an earlier scene where Django is literally just sitting and doing nothing for about fifteen minutes.

Note: There are a lot of movies with "Django" in the title but that have nothing to do with this movie. The one I really really want to see is called Django Kill which, from the descriptions I've read, sounds like it could be the greatest movie ever made. I say that about a lot of things though. I've not had success finding that one yet.

Rome Open City

1945 slapstick comedy

Rating: 18/20

Plot: It's just like every skit that I ever saw on The Benny Hill show except with more Nazis and no "Yakety Sax" at all.

Stark, powerful look at the life of ordinary people and folks involving themselves in the Resistenza near the end of World War II, the "Not-So-Great" War. There aren't special effects or exterior sets needed. This was filmed right after the Germans were booted, and maybe better than any movie I can remember, it shows everything like it really was, even more than a documentary would. And definitely more than an Ernest movie would! The characters and their motivations are sketches, but I liked that. It made some of the twists in the story more twisty and helped lend a realism to everything that was going on. It never really felt like I was watching a movie. To be completely honest, it didn't always feel like I was watching a good movie. The lighting is bad in spots, and it looks cheaply produced at times. But when you take the film in context, it's impressive stuff and somehow seems to give the movie more ummph. It's really Open City's rough edges that make it the experience that it is. It's not the happiest movie you'll ever see, especially the devastating final fifteen minutes, but it's probably a movie you should see anyway.

The Pumaman

1980 Italian movie about English-speaking Aztec superheroes

Rating: 4/20

Plot: Kobras, an evil gentleman, has gotten his hands on a magical Aztec mask which he intends to use to control the world. An Aztec arrives to find somebody, specifically Pumaman, to stop Kobras. Well, it's either an Aztec or Jack Nicholson's buddy in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. The Aztec locates Pumaman, paleontologist Tony Farms, and gives him a magic belt which gives him yellow pants, a black shirt with a picture of a mask on the front of it, and a red cape. Suddenly, he's got destructive claws, night vision, and the ability to fly, and he's all ready to put a stop to the evil Kobras's evil plan.

Well, Pumaman sort of flies. It's not exactly the best special effect I've ever seen. It's essentially the actor bent slightly at the waist and making a flailing motion with his hands in front of a blue screen. It's not good at all, but apparently the producers of The Pumaman thought the flying effects were their ticket to box office success because it seems that over half of this movie is scenes of the low-grade, no-budget superhero stumbling through the air. The costume's ludicrous. I'm pretty sure I could grab articles of clothing from my closet and drawers to put together a better costume than Pumaman's. Add dopey fist fights, a space ship thing that looks like a Pokemon ball, Stonehenge, fake heads, disco funk, and black leather outfits. Despite the low quality of the movie, there's still a lot of wisdom squeezed into the dialogue of The Pumaman, most provided by the Aztec. Before watching this, I didn't know that dinosaurs became extinct because they forgot how to love each other. Now I do. And I'll definitely take the "It's not how one sleeps but how one wakes that is important" proverb to heart. I don't know anything about Aztec religious beliefs, but I'm going to have to find a church to see if I can get my hands on one of those belts. Or an Aztec buddy! Pumaman!