Plot: Rudi is an illegal street racer named whose reputation in the area
becomes so strong that he is hired by a drug kingpin to compete professionally on the
circuit. Mix in a dame and some drug crimes and you've got yourself a conflict.
My rating: 3/10
Will I watch it again? No.
Woof! Four writers are credited with creating this by-the-numbers script. I don't mind that it's so predictable but there's nothing at all interesting about this picture. It's one cliche after another but with A LOT of racing footage that is almost entirely comprised of closeups of cars where you see the car they want you to look at with very little else inside the frame. Most of the time I couldn't tell what was going on with who. I knew which car was Rudy's (Testi) but you don't get a chance to see the big picture. When someone crashes or there's some kind of an accident, you don't get to see what caused it; you just see someone spinning or trying to get off the track. The love story is typical, none of the conflicts between Rudy and everyone else (it seems like he gets pissed off at every A level and B level character) deliver any dramatic punch, and there's just too much fat between the story and the racing footage. That's bad enough on its own but this picture clocks in a twelve minutes shy of two hours and it's not good enough to deserve that much time. The ending wraps up insanely fast where you find out that everything worked out for Rudy and friends like a nice bow on a package that miraculously wrapped itself up saving the filmmakers from having to show the audience any evidence of the quick exposition vomit that just came out of Napoli's (Orlando) mouth.
The print I watched was a lousy fullscreen VHS quality one. That trailer above looks better than what I watched. IMDb doesn't list what scope this was filmed but I imagine this is a damn sight better seeing this widescreen in a theater but then it's got too many problems that would keep even that from making this good enough to recommend.
Tagline: Tender young flesh seduced by the ultimate evil!
Plot: In the crypt of the remote castle of the Aguilars lies the
recently-deceased body of Maria. Her husband Antonio is a jealous bully,
his mute brother Ignazio is in a wheelchair peeping on his caretaker
Sol, a novice. Also present are Miria, the couple's virginal daughter,
and Isidro, a factotum who fears Satan's power. A frequent visitor is
Juan Suarez, a doctor who wants Miria in a sanatorium for a month. She
doesn't want to go. Isidro tries to exorcize the castle's evil spirits.
Bodies pile up. Is Miria's mother truly dead, and who is Satan's tool?
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? Nope.
Hmmmmm. Where to start? Director Bianchi thought it best to begin with a two minute softcore lesbian makeout session and you know what? He was right. The music over that (by Nico Cantanese, for his sole feature film) is pretty fucking of-it's-day-Eurosleaze great. Sadly, that one motif is repeated enough over the first few minutes that you get the idea that he'd run out of ideas. I counted two themes used in the picture with that first, main one playing 80% over the other one and you hear it A LOT, which got old fast. The nudity, ahem, thankfully does not tire.
It needs to be said, before you stop reading, that there's a lot of nudity. It's shocking, I know, because it's an Italian horror movie. It's a small cast. There are 3 women and 4 men. Between this troupe of 7 actors, you get to see 3 different pair of tits (for a total of 6 - count 'em, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 boobs!), 3 glorious Euro bushes and two dicks. Dicks, you say? Yes. More on that in a moment. When the film needs to move, it does at a reasonable pace. But there are many scenes that linger for a long, long time and over stay their welcome, and they all revolve around naughty bits. Now, I know what you're thinking; "Hey, Scorethefilm. What gives? Don't you like the sex?". I do, and thank you for asking. However when the already overplayed and once memorable theme makes yet another go around AND the sex act feels like it's playing out in real time (because it takes a while) only it goes beyond that, then it's too much. Sol (Giordano) pleasures herself in bed while the parapalegic, wheelchair bound Ignazio (Gaita) secretly watches on. You'd think this would last 60 seconds or so but it goes on for a full four minutes. This is softcore, not porn so no graphic stuff. This is a frequent thing with this flick. And then, BAM! An hour in, someone looks like she's going to go down on Ignazio...
And then she does. For real. With hard dick in hand, she does her little mouth dance. Alright, it seems that we now just went hardcore. I can dig it. A couple of minutes in you can tell that she's already at the point in the act that she ready to milk it for all it's worth, so to speak. So she's fist pounding it like she's in the whack-a-mole finals and occasionally tries to restore life with her tongue, hoping that will light the nerve endings on fire, but that clearly isn't helping. Look, I've been there. It's frustrating when you're unable to finish on cue but it's also sad to watch. She spent 4 full minutes trying to make that happen after she'd given up on the throat bath. After that, she sets her sights on bangin' Antonio (Sambrell), her husband before she died, but this time, after another overlong speed bag session with his dick and her uvula, they have vaginal sex.
Now, you could make the argument that these two hardcore scenes help the story and I would not disagree in this case, but the sheer length of the scenes makes you aware that this is no longer artistic but rather excessive. But that's just me. Anyway, back to the movie proper... There's something strange going on that involves Antonio's dead wife from the beginning of the picture. Is she alive or what? What's making all this weird shit happen? As the film goes on you get more and more until you know exactly what the fuck is going on in the last half hour. Once that happens, bodies start dropping like flies and the kills are fun. There's a bit of padding in addition to the sex and some of the dialogue exchanges get tedious where a character will repeat the same thought but with different words. It's not an economic screenplay by a long shot. Mood is more important. And it didn't hurt that it was filmed in a castle, giving that Gothic vibe and the widescreen print I watched was dirty which adds to the sleaze factor. Italian dub with English subs is the way to go. It's no classic but there's a good movie in here somewhere. Great fucking posters, right?
Starring: Clarence Williams III, Joe Torry, De'aundre Bonds, Samuel Monroe Jr., Wings Hauser, Tom Wright, Anthony Griffith, David Alan Grier, Duane Whitaker, Corbin Bernsen, Rosiland Cash
Tagline: Where nightmares and reality meet on the street
Plot: A funeral director tells four strange tales of horror with an African
American focus to three drug dealers he traps in his place of business.
My rating: 8/10
Will I watch it again? Yes.
Of all of the horror anthologies I've seen that were made in the past forty years, this is one of the best. I loved it!
There are four main stories with a fifth one being the framing wraparound tale which is called...
Welcome to My Mortuary sees three gangbangers approach a mortuary (in a house) around Halloween for a drug deal. Once inside, Mr. Simms (hilariously played by Williams III). Before he gives them the drugs he starts spinning tales of horror (as you would). This sets the four main stories in motion with a little bit of stuff inbetween with the guys reacting to Simms' yarns.
Rogue Cop Revelation has a couple of horrible, white, drug-dealing, crooked cops pulling over a black man for no reason but to send him a message for speaking out against said crooked cops. They fuck him up hard and it's painful to watch. Anyway, his dead body gets his revenge. The only thing fun about this one is seeing these assholes get their comeuppance and boy do they get it.
Boys Do Get Bruised is a depressing tale of a small boy often coming to school bruised up. He tells his teacher a monster does it and shows him the picture he drew of the giant, scary green creature. Naturally, being a kid and talking all fantastical, the teacher finally is concerned enough to visit the boy's single mother at her home to get to the bottom of this. She's rude about it and seems to be hiding something. She's got a touch of a violent streak but it's not until her boyfriend comes over for dinner that you find out he's the monster and the child has manifested his abuse as coming from an actual monster. This story is fucking great all the way through with a fantastic finish. There's some great storytelling going on here.
KKK Comeuppance - Corbin Bernsen stars as Duke Metger, a former KKK leader who is running for office and is one racist mother fucker. He lives in a Southern mansion where slaves were slaughtered in the 19th Century. One racist thing after another and the ancestors of the dead (in the form of a doll) fuck Metger's shit up real good. Bernen throws himself into the role and brings out the relentless asshole of the character. It's a fun one.
Then there's Hard Core Convert where a gang member who, after a shootout with another gang when the police show up, finds him self severely wounded and taken to a hospital. Some time later he's recooperated and Dr. Cushing (Rosalind Cash) tells him he will be released from prison hospital if he accepts to go into a behavior modification program, which he accepts. Then it gets into A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971) territory where the big takeaway is he's spent his life killing black people and that needs to stop. That's the gist. He sees horrifying actual vintage photographs of the KKK, lynchings and murders of black men, often times with smiling whites (including children) surrounding them, proud of their deed. The images flash so quickly that you get the message, but after the movie, I went back to this part and slowed it down so I could see more clearly what was shown and it's some severely fucked up shit.
But wait, the movie's not over yet. We've still got the mortuary story to wrap up and that one was fun as hell. The looks on their faces when they find out what's really going on are priceless.
These are, unfortunately, real life situations that far too many people regularly face which makes this even scarier than your typical monster movie anthologies. Writer, director Cundieff did a marvelous job of going beyond what typically satisfies a horror anthology and brought to the screen something that is real world horrifying while still fulfilling the scary movie stuff we usually get, and each story satisfies each side of the fence equally well. It digs deep and remains a fun, scary movie. It's sad that all of these stories are just as relevant today, if not more so, as they were when the picture was made 25 years ago.
I see that it took Cundieff and Scott 23 years to make a sequel in 2018 and another just last month! The more you know. I'm going to have to check those out. And I almost forgot, Christopher Young's score is great!
Tagline: Time Was Running Out For Johnny O'Clock ... and so were his women!
Plot: New York gambling house operator Johnny O'Clock is junior partner in a
posh casino with Guido Marchettis and Chuck Blayden, a crooked cop. But
Blayden is trying to cut into the casino's profits and warns Johnny not
to interfere with his intention of becoming Marchettis' full partner.
Blayden ends his relationship with coat check girl Harriet Hobson, then
disappears. Later, Harriet is found dead in her apartment, apparently
from suicide. Police Inspector Koch begins an investigation.He questions
Johnny, Harriet's sister Nancy, who is infatuated with Johnny, and
Johnny's associate, Charlie. When Blayden's body turns up in a nearby
river, and when it is learned that Harriet death wasn't suicide but
murder by poison, Johnny and Marchettis become prime suspects in both
cases.To make matters worse, Pete Marchettis discovers that his wife
Nelle is having an affair with Johnny. Out of jealousy, he sends hired
gunmen to kill Johnny in a drive-by shooting while Johnny is driving
Nancy to the airport. Johnny, now certain that Marchettis has betrayed
him, goes to the casino to end their business partnership.
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? No.
Johnny O'Clock wouldn't be in this mess if he hadn't been squirelling around with all those dames. He's one troubled dude. Is that why he's such a brooding downer? I don't think I saw him smile or laugh once. Powell does a fine job but for my money, it was Cobb who stole the show as a drab, solid, hardened detective who's out for Johnny and to clean up the criminals. He was great and the picture would've benefited from more of him. But then this is called JOHNNY O'CLOCK and not INSPECTOR KOCH. And while I'm thinking about it, That's a terrible last name. Drinking game: take a shot every time someone says his last name and you'll be hammered in twenty minutes. It's so bad with the number and frequency that it calls attention to itself, hurting the picture for anyone who picks up on (and it's easy to notice and not stop noticing).
The writing has your standard 40s crime dialogue and for the most part it's good. It's when it gets into the melodrama with the broads is when it goes south, and there's enough of it to realize Rossen and Holmes were weak on writing female characters. That's also where the picture shifts halfway in to deal with Johnny's relationships with his women and it starts to drag. Until then, they'd done a nice job with the pacing of that first third only to crawl from that point on until the finish line was in sight. The ending isn't a winner either with it's odd mix of emotions. Johnny's a criminal but he's also the nicest and most charming of all the criminals in the picture so Inspector Koch gets his man but he's not really sore at Johnny, hinting that he'll put in a good word so his punishment won't be so bad. It was just a little too happy for my taste.
Tagline: The Hilarious Escapades of an Infamous Lover!
Plot: During a huge sex party at his place, spaghetti western star and the
greatest lover's descendant Joe Casanova is knocked unconscious. He
dreams that he's put on trial which quickly turns into another orgy.
Once again I've been betrayed by a movie poster (SHOCKER!). This is disappointing in so many ways. First of all, I was in the mood for a sexy, silly costume period piece. Instead, it's about a descendant of the famous lover who gets hit on the head while hosting a sexy party. While unconscious, he dreams about being on trial as a sex freak who learns that he's a conceited asshole that doesn't appreciate those around him that love him. Naturally he wakes up at the end a changed man and promises to be a better friend and lover. Ho-fucking-hum! At least Uschi's in it!
That lackluster plot device is just here to show that the film makers tried to have a story creative enough to showcase A LOT of female nudity. Someone should've told them that they could've achieved the same goal by starting the picture with Casanova announcing to a room full of naked women, "Who wants to fuck?" and let the adventure begin. What's here is a smattering of weak humor, some lame music (but not all of it), stale technical merits and an exercise in padding the run time.
Man, this guy gets ALL the pussy!
It does have a smidgen of entertainment value but it's often dull and uninteresting. It at least picks up some steam once Casanova goes into dreamland but there's no reason it needs to be 90 minutes which is much too long. At least we got a big drum solo sexy dance!
Plot: An 8-part Italian sex comedy anthology, all of which center around various women who call the shots with the men in their lives.
My rating: 3/10
Will I watch it again? No.
Oh, this is just dreadful. It's 95 minutes of unfunny. There are 8 short stories (2 each for the four leading ladies) lasting anywhere from about 4 minutes to way too fucking long. As you would expect with a European sex comedy, especially of the Italian variety, there's a good deal of much appreciated nudity but even that isn't enough to save this dull, dull picture. Stories, even the small ones found in anthologies, should have some sort of structure. With comedy there's usually a setup to the eventual punchline, but several of these don't even have an ending. I mean they really just stop without a hint of resolution and then move to the next one. It's baffling. The writers couldn't tie up simple, dumb bits. The last two are the most amusing which isn't saying much because any life they might have, having watched the previous six waiting for the movie to end, kills any boost they might have provided. The penultimate story is less than five minutes and it has Ursula Andress flashing traffic in front of an auto mechanic shop.
At the end of the bit we find out that she gets a cut of all the new business at the shop generated by her shenanigans. It's mildly amusing but hot really all THAT funny. Then the final story has a very energetic (and fun) Laura Antonelli playing a businesswoman who meets an orchestra conductor to date but she get work phone calls constantly so they only have a few seconds in between them to fool around. The initial joke is funny enough but what really sells it is that the joke leaves the bedroom and continues when she brings him along to meet a client and it keeps going from there, escalating all the while. I've rarely found the European sex comedies of the 70s (or 80s for that matter) worthwhile. The humor is very broad (and dumb, and I love a good, dumb comedy sometimes), the men are typically extremely immature (I know, right?) and the jokes just aren't funny. I was brought to this because of my love for Roberto Benigni. That man is a comic dynamite genius but he's wasted in his brief segment. And I unfortunately only had access to the English dub which was fine for everything but his bit. I would've preferred to hear his actual voice. What little there is to like here is all but destroyed by everything else that bored the mess out of me. I'm glad I can now move on to the next flick.
Tagline: See APE *defy the jaws of giant shark *destroy a teeming city *demolish an ocean liner *vanquish monster reptile
Plot: A newly discovered 36-foot gorilla escapes from a freighter off the
coast of Korea. At the same time an American actress is filming a movie
in the country. Chaos ensues as the ape kidnaps her and rampages through
Seoul.
My rating: 3/10
Will I watch it again? Nope.
One of the things you'll read on the movie poster is, "Not To Be Confused With KING KONG". You don't have to worry about that one bit. There are a small handful of moments that you'll get a chuckle out of. And these are moments where it's so bad it's good. I'd say there were three
or four. It's not nearly enough to justify watching this movie. The
music is very repetitive, giving you plenty of chances to hear each of
the three themes used over and over again. I don't know what else
composer Bruce MacRae did with his career but IMDb shows this as his
only screen credit. There are a few WTF moments that don't seem to have
any relation to the rest of the picture. Aside from those very few
laughs, there's nothing all that entertaining about this. The acting
is anywhere from bad to fun. Alex Nicol (in one of his final film roles before
retiring) as Col. Davis has the most fun and he's easily giving the best
performance. APE does have the added benefit of starring Joanna Kerns in her first feature film. I'm sure she's awfully proud of that distinction. I would be.
The effects are cheap and shoddy which add to the entertainment value. That there's a man in the monkey suit doing just about everything
in slow motion doesn't hurt nor help. The worst part is just how long
many scenes run, dragging the picture down with it. APE's 86 minutes can be
brutal. It feels like this is about as far from KING KONG (1933) as you
can get, but then no one, and absolutely no one working on this picture had any expectations
for much more than what it ended up being. How about this cheesy dialogue at the end, after the destruction and fate of Ape? Marilyn: Why, Tom, why?
Tom: It's just too big for a small world like ours. Roll credits.
Tagline: Come children of the universe, let Donovan take you away, far far away.
Plot: In 1349, while the Black Plague threatens Germany, the town of Hamelin
hires a wandering pied piper (Donovan) to lure rats away with his magic
pipe, but then refuses to pay for his services, causing him to lure the
town's children away.
My rating: 7/10
Will I watch it again? No.
I really need to read Grimm's fairy tales because I LOVE dark tales involving bad things happening to children largely because, for as long as I can remember, that subject is a big taboo that Hollywood doesn't dare tread (you know, killing children and such). As I watched this I started to remember bits and pieces of the story from when I read it as a kid forty or so years ago. This flick looks great and it's well-acted. For a non-actor, pop music sensation Donovan does pretty well. Naturally, this being the early 70s and written and performed by Donovan, the songs are all of their time and not sounding hundreds of years old, so hearing 70s folk tunes in a movie set in the mid-1300s is weird. Michael Hordern kills it as local doctor/wizard-type. I enjoy a good picture set in Europe way back when. The Plague is near, people are on edge and bad people continue to do bad things. I liked the last half hour the most, probably because that's when it's at its darkest. I would've preferred a much darker ending but you can't have everything. There are lots of known actors which are worth watching this for. It's a good watch.
Writers: Robert Carson, James Wellard, Peter Myers
Composer: Humphrey Searle
Starring: Van Johnson, Martine Carol, Herbert Lom, Gustavo Rojo, Jose Nieto, Helen Haye, Anna Gerber, Anthony Dawson, Sean Connery, Yvonne Romain, Norman MacOwan, Brian Sunners, Helen Goss
Tagline: How a beautiful blonde and a tough smuggler escape the net of Continental conspiracy!
Plot: Carson is an American contraband runner approached by Tracy, a French
woman who wants him to help rescue her brother from Albania where he is
being held as a political prisoner.
My rating: 5.5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
With the exception of maybe BATTLEGROUND (1949), I don't think I've seen any Van Johnson movie where he was the lead. Even if I had, judging by his performance in this film, I don't think I would've remembered. Here, he's bland and his voice is often monotone or close to it. I mostly watched this for an early Sean Connery performance and for Herbert Lom. Lom has a pivotal role and has about fifteen minutes of screen time while Connery has about a minute each in the beginning and at the very end so if you blink, you'll miss him. Connery has a lot to do in those couple of minutes but it's nothing much to speak of. The film itself suffers from a lackluster male lead and a screenplay with some poor dialogue for Carson (Johnson). The movie has some action but it's also got that family kind of action drama as Carson has to travel several miles on foot with Tracy (Carol), her blind brother and several children. Carson is supposed to be a hardened and impossible man but he puts up with this lot as if it were an eye-rolling family film. And partly because of that, you just know that Carson and Tracy are going to end up together at the end. Ugh.
Plot: The extraordinary odyssey of a U.S. musician of Cape Verdean ancestry to
Tannu Tuva, in central Asia, where nomadic people throat sing more than
one note simultaneously, using vocal harmonics. A bluesman, Paul Pena,
blind and recently widowed, taught himself throat singing and was by
chance invited to the 1995 throat-singing symposium in Kyzyl. Helped by
the "Friends of Tuva," Pena makes the arduous journey. Singing in the
deep, rumbling kargyraa style, Pena gives inspired performances at the
festival, composes songs in Tuvan, washes his face in sacred rivers,
expresses the disorientation of blindness in foreign surroundings, and
makes a human connection with everyone he meets.
My rating: 7/10
Will I watch it again? No.
You can't help but like Paul. He's humble and talented as hell. Seeing him on his trip to Tuva and his being among their people is just special. It's something he never expected and his journey from when he first heard Tuvan throat singing on ham radio to being in Tuva performing at a throat singing competition is just remarkable. I got a little choked up a few times. It's a beautiful country, with beautiful people and beautiful music. I am glad to have spent time with them and Paul.
Plot: In the year 2020, cosmonaut Marcia (Domergue) orbits the planet
Venus while five astronauts and a robot journey on the surface.
Professor Hartman (Rathbone) is also on hand to observe the
exploration from a distance. The explorers are attacked by prehistoric
beasts, and then lose their robot (and nearly their lives!) in a
volcanic eruption. They discover signs of a lost civilization and an
artifact indicating that the Venusians had looked human. But what of the
strange singing sound they often have heard during their exploration?
Do the anthropomorphic Venusians still exist?
My rating: 5/10
Will I watch it again? No.
This is nothing more than a re-dub of the Russion classic, PLANETA BUR (1962), directed by Pavel Klushantsev. My preference is going to be the original film over this or any other re-use of it. But if you don't want to read subtitles or if you're a Basil Rathbone completists (in one of his last films) then knock yourself out. Rathbone is barely in it and he's in a single room for all of his scenes. It's a complete waste of this great man's talents and it's a role that just about anyone could've done. The ground-breaking special effects are fantastic and are worth the price of admission alone but they were created for the original Russian film. I can't recommend enough the documentary, THE STAR DREAMER (2002), which tells the story of the director and the mastermind behind these marvelous effects (Klushantsev) and how he struggled behind the Iron Curtain to maintain his integrity as a filmmaker. That's a far more interesting story (as is PLANETA BUR) than this American cheapie taking advantage of it. But hey, it's money. I get it.
Writers: Phil Proctor, Peter Bergman, Neal Israel, Michael Mislove, Monica McGowan Johnson
Composer: Tom Scott
Starring: Harvey Korman, Fred Willard, Peter Riegert, Zane Buzby, Nancy Morgan, John Ritter, Richard Schaal, Allan Arbus, Elvis Costello, Chief Dan George, Tommy Lasorda, Jay Leno, Peter Marshall, David Opatoshu, Meat Loaf, George Carlin, Howard Hesseman, Cybill Shepherd
Plot: In a story told in narrative flashbacks, a young TV consultant is hired
by the President of a bankrupt USA to organize a telethon in order to
prevent the country from being repossessed by wealthy Native Americans.
My rating: 6/10
Will I watch it again? No.
It's not a great movie by any stretch of the imagination but that's not to say it isn't without any fun moments and great laughs. Among them are...
This opens the picture with George Carlin's wonderfully delivered and funny narration. See, this is the future and this is Pittsburgh where two dinosaurs are fighting over a parking space. The Ray Harryhausen footage is from THE ANIMAL WORLD (1956) and I need to see it!
We first meet Monty Rushmore (Korman) in drag, showing once again how much of a natural comedian and dramatic actor he was. Damn, I miss that guy.
Zane Buzby plays Mouling Jackson, the most poplar performer of "puke rock" out there. This broad was fucking hysterical and she owned every scene she was in. I want more of her, please!
Topless marionettes. 'Nuff said!
Meat Loaf (as Oklahoma Roy Budnitz, AKA The Car Killer) kilss a car and wins over the audience. He comes back later to give blood to raise money for the country and he's funny as shit.
Jay Leno stars in one of the funnier bits during the 30-day telethon where he plays Larry "Poopy Butt" Miller boxing his mom (hilariously played by stuntwoman, May Boss). This was one one of the more inspired bits of the show.
And an uncredited Cybill Shepherd kicks the telethon off with Monty.
Carlin's voice is heard throughout and not only is his delivery fantastic but he's funny and his voice is just what this picture needed for that role. There are a lot of funny bits in this picture and I laughed out loud a few times. Having the telethon with lots of different acts is a brilliant way to justify all kinds of wild and crazy bits which were touched on but could've been so much more. It's a wasted opportunity right there. The jokes aren't consistent and there aren't enough of them to keep the momentum going. Had there been, this could've become a classic. As it is, it's got a pretty good foundation for one and it's far from not being entertaining. I'm oldschool and I appreciate a lot of the talent in front of the camera on this one so unless it's a shitstorm of epic proportions, I'm probably going to enjoy it on some level...and I did.
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