Robin Hood and the Pirates (1960)

April 15, 2013June 16, 2018 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

What could possibly be better than Robin Hood battling some filthy, scurvy-ridden pirates? Teaming up with some filthy, scurvy-ridden pirates to fight the evil douche who killed his dad and stole the Earldom of Sherwood!

And while no one can deny that trading Little John for a eye-patch wearing pirate called One Eye who actually has two good eyes is a monster upgrade, the movie would have been merely been solidly entertaining if it had stuck solely to its “pirates standing in for the Merry Men” angle.

But it in a stroke of either genius or complete tastelessness, this Italian version of Robin Hood (with German film legend and former Tarzan Lex Barker) adds a bit of sauce to the mix by giving us Sweet Pea, a sassy full-figured black woman, prone to singing spirituals and alternately beating on One Eye and declaring her love for him! Continue reading “Robin Hood and the Pirates (1960)” →

Sword in the Shadows (1961)

April 15, 2013June 16, 2018 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t need any of the gypsy queen’s gift of prophecy to know that when her clan swiped a bunch of horses that belonged to the evil della Rocca family that there would be a level of hell to pay that not even the evil eye of the bosomy she-tiger gypsy hussy who may or may not be a traitor could counter!

That these della Rocca roaches were also the same family that cold-bloodedly wiped out the ruling Altavila family fifteen years before and that the dude who actually did the horse thieving was Fabrizio, the only surviving member of the Altavilla family, but who doesn’t know his true identity, only served to amp up the tension at the castle were so many people suffered from unrequited love when they weren’t out relieving that tension by burning down gypsy encampments!

I guess I was supposed to be sympathetic to the gypsies and Fabrizio. After all, they weren’t out murdering families, including little kids, but they did stupidly stir up a hornet’s nest when they went and stole those horses. Continue reading “Sword in the Shadows (1961)” →

Son of the Red Corsair (1959)

April 15, 2013June 16, 2018 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

If I wanted to see a real butch he-man like Lex Barker dressed in his satiny finest and wearing a powdered wig, I would go to that premium members only web site that’s discreetly billed to my credit card at $29.98 month!

But it wasn’t as if the transgendered appearance of one our great Tarzans was the only thing marring my enjoyment of what should have been an easy sell to someone as indiscriminate as me when it comes to Italian adventure films. There was the nasal and simpering voice used to dub Lex’s no doubt brawny real life voice, the fact that Lex fought sword fights while undercover with a blade that had his real name on it, and of course the pansified dance scene Lex and the audience were forced to endure during one of the movie’s numerous bouts of action anorexia. Continue reading “Son of the Red Corsair (1959)” →

Tiger of the Seven Seas (1962)

April 15, 2013June 16, 2018 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

Is there a love strong enough that can withstand one pirate believing that her boyfriend pirate murdered her father in an effort to get revenge on her and her father because she bested him in humiliating fashion during their epic sword fight to determine who the new captain of the Santa Maria would be?

Of course the answer is normally, “fudge no!” What sort of pirate gets beat by his girlfriend and then mocked by her father and doesn’t come back later on and burn their entire freaking village to the ground and then salt the earth just to make sure they get the message? Some receipts just have to be issued in bloody triplicate!

But this isn’t a normal pirate love affair between a swarthy, lice-ridden, insecure brute and his barrel-chested, toothless 17th Century version of a used up biker mama! Continue reading “Tiger of the Seven Seas (1962)” →

Rhythm and Passion (1990)

April 14, 2013March 5, 2016 ~ monsterhunter ~ 2 Comments

Smartly mixing the Lambada craze of 1989 (or about two weeks of 1989 at least), ingeniously inept filmmaking by an unknown Italian director (he twice uses the same pointless shot of star Andy J. Forest hanging up the phone where the camera pans up from the phone, over Andy’s crotch and finally up to Andy’s typically corpse-like expression he wears throughout the film), and a conspiracy involving a garbage truck, Lambada (released for the U.S. home video market as Rhythm and Passion, probably to avoid confusion with Cannon Films‘ own 1990 movie called Lambada) is a sweaty, panty-flashing, occasionally topless experience so adroitly malformed that the main characters don’t matter, the whole reason they are in Brazil is mostly ignored, and the big dance contest to end the movie is a contest only in the sense that there is a bunch of dancing, a banner announcing said contest, and a passing reference to the bad guy having 98 points. Continue reading “Rhythm and Passion (1990)” →

Rampage of Evil (1961)

April 14, 2013June 16, 2018 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

You know what was on a rampage in this movie? Talking. And planning. And talking about planning. And talking about planning about what do with a bunch of mutinous Slavs.

Sure, you had your adrenaline-fueled moments of our hero going undercover as a goat shepherd (whose herd was made up of exactly one goat) where he fooled three drunken Slavs with a beard so fake that no one but a trio of Slavs who can’t hold their liquor would be fooled.

And when the Slavs stab our hero’s only goat for no apparent reason, we all held our breath to see if our hero could muster anything sufficiently resembling vague confusion at the wanton act of goat-cruelty so that his cover wasn’t blown. Continue reading “Rampage of Evil (1961)” →

Ursus in the Valley of the Lions (1961)

April 14, 2013June 16, 2018 ~ monsterhunter ~ Leave a comment

It took until the fourth movie in Ursus’ nine movie career to finally unleash his secret origin. Was it because it was too painful for Ursus to relate to us? Was there some secret shame that drove him to muscularly right the wrongs so pervasive in the ancient world he inhabited? Was there an Uncle Ben lurking in his background somewhere?

Uh no, this isn’t an angst-ridden story about some pussy bug boy! This is the tale of the most bad ass of Italian bad ass bodybuilder flicks! Just how bad ass? Four words: raised by freaking lions! Continue reading “Ursus in the Valley of the Lions (1961)” →