Category: Italian Cinema

Contamination (1980)

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In true Italian movie fashion, Director Luigi Cozzi (Demons 6, Hercules, Sinbad of the Seven Seas) gets an Italian, Canadian, and a Scotsman to play a trio of Americans taking on an alien invasion housed in a Colombian coffee plant.

Though a bit of a let down due to the lack of snappy coffee oriented one liners whenever an alien was wiped out (You should’ve ordered decaf!) the loving attention paid to slow motion chest explosions, an exploding rat, and the description of one character as “whiskey-soaked” easily overcomes that disappointment. Continue reading “Contamination (1980)” →

The House of Witchcraft (1989)

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At the beginning of this movie when I saw the scene of our hero discovering a witch dumping his severed head in her kitchen cauldron, I thought “awesome scene! Too bad we don’t get to see that more than once!”

Toward the end of the movie when I saw the scene of our hero discovering a witch dumping his severed head in her kitchen cauldron, I thought “awesome scene! Too bad we don’t get to see that more than twice!”

Then, at the very end the of the movie when I saw the scene of our hero discovering his new girlfriend was a witch and that she had a relative with a maggot-encrusted skull who chopped his head off with a scythe so that she could dump his severed head in her kitchen cauldron, I thought “this is like the special extended edition director’s cut of a scene that I’ve already sat through twice!” Continue reading “The House of Witchcraft (1989)” →

Ghosthouse (1988)

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It’s another Lara Wendel masterpiece! Mercilessly stinking up the joint in such bottom feeding Italian horror movies as Zombie 5: Killing Birds and The Red Monks, Lara now applies her special brand of standing around looking dumb and sounding even dumber (thanks to the obnoxiously dubbed voice with an accent as ugly as the wardrobe everyone subjects us to throughout), to this haunted house movie from noted Italian master Humphrey Humbert. Continue reading “Ghosthouse (1988)” →

Zorikan the Barbarian (1964)

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ZorikanPosterThough Zorikan sounds like some sort of rodenticide, he’s actually the best thing in an otherwise dreary heap of curdled Italian cheese.

Veteran sword and sandal pro Don Vadis (Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators) scowls, sneers, chortles and tortures his way through a story involving a stolen religious relic which unwisely focuses on people walking, riding horses, sitting in tents, and talking about either stealing or recovering said relic. All that being said, Zorikan did have a really nice tent. Very spacious, well decorated and equipped with a bed. He may have been a low down heathen Saracen, but when he went invading, dude did it in style! Continue reading “Zorikan the Barbarian (1964)” →

Journey Beneath the Desert (1961)

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We’ve all admired director Edward G. Ulmer’s ability to make decent little movies like Detour and The Man From Planet X with nothing beyond a camera and a few actors. He had an uncanny ability to elicit an atmosphere and a look with these movies that belie their abbreviated shooting time and their even more abbreviated budget, so I was intrigued to see how his Journey Beneath the Desert would turn out. Could Ulmer finally be the guy to deliver on the promise of all those “lost races under the earth ruled by sexy broads” movies that inevitably disappointed? Continue reading “Journey Beneath the Desert (1961)” →