Director Andrea Bianchi’s Massacre revolves around a bunch of murders happening during the shooting of a horror film called Dirty Blood. Dirty Blood looks like your typical Bianchi film, what with its murky visuals and murkier story line, but the bits and pieces of it we get to see being filmed make it apparent that it would probably be more entertaining than the real Bianchi movie we are actually sitting through! Continue reading “Massacre (1989)”
Category: Italian Cinema
Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975)
A singularly scuzzy experience, Strip Nude For Your Killer contains many a moment that will leave the viewer feeling in need of a thorough post-movie scrubbing. There’s the ample shots of flabby Italian chicks in various states of undress, their skinny boyfriend Carlo who is likewise occasionally clothing-challenged, the department store music that calls to mind The Newlywed Game by way of a porno, and of course the opening scene of a woman in stirrups. I don’t know about you, but I’ve yet to see a good movie that began with a scene at the OB/GYN. Continue reading “Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975)”
Kill, Panther Kill! (1968)
Fifth films in movie series have a spotty track record. For every crappy movie like Star Trek V, there’s a movie like Hellraiser: Inferno that I can’t even remember if I’ve even seen it! Continue reading “Kill, Panther Kill! (1968)”
Ali Baba and the Sacred Crown (1962)
Who is the real Ali Baba? Is he just a simple woodcutter who stumbled onto the greatest find in all of ancient Arabia? Perhaps he’s just a common thief, sneaking around securing his ill-gotten gains by eavesdropping on other thieves? Or maybe he’s the guy who has to constantly be saved from the murderous thieves by the guile of his brother’s slave girl?
If you were any kind of reader, all the foregoing would certainly be possible based on the tale commonly recounted in One Thousand and One Nights. My Ali Baba though is too cool for trillion year old stories that don’t make a lick of sense. (What sort of lesson does this story teach – make sure your slave girl is some kind of Navy SEAL?) Continue reading “Ali Baba and the Sacred Crown (1962)”
Alien 2: On Earth (1980)
This is the alien invasion movie that bowlers have been waiting for! The original Alien was a pretty good little film. It had atmosphere, cool monster, gooey special effects, and even a cyborg! But it left a lot of us keglers feeling like it was that spare we had to settle for after failing to pick up the strike in the tenth frame. Sure, you had an alien on the rampage in deep space and all, but where in the heck was all the bowling? How much more dramatic would it have been if the alien was trying to eat Ripley while she was in the middle of trying to bowl 300? Crud! I just soiled myself thinking about the tension! Continue reading “Alien 2: On Earth (1980)”
Django (1966)
Django is widely regarded as the other movie that kickstarted the entire Spaghetti Western genre. Coming out about two years after Clint Eastwood’s and Sergio Leone’s A Fistful Of Dollars, Django somehow was the one that actually caught on in a huge way in the foreign market (though it remained virtually unseen in America for years) and caused not only every Italian guy with access to a camera to make a new-style western, but also caused them to put Django’s name in every one of their titles whether it was actually about a guy named Django or not. Continue reading “Django (1966)”
Robowar (1988)
Have you ever sat through Predator and thought to yourself how much you’d like to see the same movie, but without the cool space monster, the big name actors, the special effects, and technical expertise of John McTiernan? Continue reading “Robowar (1988)”