For Bob, it was a day like any other in a cheesy minimal effort E.T. the Extraterrestrial wannabe life. Rush through breakfast so he could make the baseball game where he’d be rightfully bullied for his utter failure to hit a fastball, hit the airboat races with his family to watch his dad bring home a sweet $5000 prize and then see one of his father’s competitors get in his face about it. Later on a gator attacked their airboat, knocking dad overboard, causing Bob to lose consciousness and end up kidnapped by a UFO piloted by a talking robot with giant human-like eyes! Damn little dude, I bet you wish hadn’t been so hellbent on hurrying through your breakfast now! Continue reading “Navigators of the Space (1993)”
Category: Italian Cinema
Eyes Behind the Stars (1978)
An uncompromising and bleak effort, Eyes Behind the Stars is a surprisingly serious sci-fi conspiracy thriller with almost none of the goofiness you would expect from an Italian exploitation movie generally and especially from Mario Gariazzo who also made the spectacularly inept, tastless and boring Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind the same year! (Of course, the aliens in Eyes Behind the Stars could be classified as a bit silly-looking with their wool long johns pulled up over their heads and blue plastic visers covering their face, but their intelligence and technology are probably way too advanced for someone watching a 1970s Italian sci-fi film to properly grasp.) Continue reading “Eyes Behind the Stars (1978)”
Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (1978)
Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind is an Italian sex farce focussing on three scumbags who dress up in cheap spaceman costumes and trick women into being intimate with them, committing any number of felonies in the process (not the least of which is being criminally unfunny), but who are only ever arrested for running a red light while dressed up as women. (Their clothes had been stolen and the only things nearby to wear were dresses, but that didn’t explain why they all felt like they needed to be in full drag complete with wigs and hats.) Continue reading “Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind (1978)”
The Brother from Space (1988)
A priest, a blind psychic, her seeing eye dog and a midget alien all walk into a church. What sounds like the beginnings of a bad joke turns out be exactly that.
Though presumably made by adults who should have known better, The Brother from Space feels like what would happen if a little depressed kid who saw E.T. the Extraterrestrial wanted to make his own version. Little dude gets lost on our planet, kindly folks give him shelter and befriend him, and surly military guy tries to capture him. The movie of course contains none of the drama or tension you get from reading that E.T. rip-off to-do list. Continue reading “The Brother from Space (1988)”
Blue Tornado (1991)
Unlike what a lot of lazy film snobs like to say, Blue Tornado is not some Top Gun meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind movie. It’s much more nuanced than that. It’s actually Top Gun‘s music, fetishistic shots of jet planes and pilots with awesome call signs plus an alien abduction tacked on at the end. It even actually surpasses Top Gun since while Maverick just let Goose die, Firebird hiked up a mountain and rescued Thunder from the clutches of a bunch of alien strobe lights. Kick the tires and the light the fires on that, Mav! Continue reading “Blue Tornado (1991)”
The Final Executioner (1984)
It’s another Italian stock footage apocalypse! Culled from the most routine of public domain clips of black and white mushroom clouds, model cities getting blown away, and most inexplicably of all, erupting volcanoes and bright red lava flows, the beginning of The Final Executioner not only marks the end of the world as we know it, but also the most professional part of the film, too!
Thank god! Just bring on the narrator for 20 seconds of exposition explaining the crazy illogical world that rose from the ashes so that we can get on with watching the stud decked out in black leather and white scarf bad assing around the wasteland just like was promised on the poster! Continue reading “The Final Executioner (1984)”
Tough to Kill (1979)
An elite fighting force charged with blowing up a dam that is surely a suicide mission! Twenty men against an army in hostile territory with no one to depend on except each other! And one of them has a million dollar price on his head! But money means nothing when it’s your brother in arms, right? Damn right! Except when it’s a million dollars! What are you, freaking stupid?