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!
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