Blood and Bullets (1976)

aka Knell, The Bloody Avenger

Original title: Sangue di sbirro

Dan Caputo (George Eastman), a giant with a short fuse and a violent disposition who goes by the nickname of Knell (as in death knell) returns to New York shortly after the death of his father. Because this is that kind of movie, Dan single-handedly thwarts an air jacking attempt by half a dozen or so armed guys on his way in. Sure, quite a few of the hostages die during the shoot-out, but apparently, he’s still a big damn hero.

Somewhat more plot-relevant attempts at our protagonist’s life begin when he hasn’t even entered the apartment he grew up in and where his father was killed. Of course, random mooks are easily dispatched. To make Dan’s life a little easier, he’s also greeted by an old associate of his, the avuncular (if one’s uncle is a bit of a killer, at least) gang leader Duke (Jack Palance) who comes with some helpful gunplay and his own free corpse disposal service.

From here on out, barely a scene goes by in which Dan isn’t involved in a brutal beatdown – mostly with him as the delivering party – or a shoot-out with people who really don’t want him to find out who killed his father, or why. The film does manage to squeeze in a couple of flashbacks about the fraught relationship between Dan and his dad, a sub-plot about him reconnecting with an old girlfriend (Jenny Tamburi), and even some detective work. Repeat until all of the bad guys are dead and Duke – spoiler – crowns himself the new king of the underworld, because all of this was apparently part of his evil plan, or something.

Around these parts, Blood and Bullets’ director Alfonso Brescia is mostly beloved for his wild and woolly cardboard and blinking lights space operas, films whose cheapness is only exceeded by their inspired weirdness. Being a working Italian genre director, Brescia was involved in other genres as well, which brings us to this Eurocrime movie. Or truthfully, this endless series of cheaply – though not as cheaply as Brescia’s science fiction – realized yet energetic action sequences. Brescia isn’t one of the great Italian crime action directors, but what he lacks in finesse when it comes to editing, blocking and rhythm, he does make up for in energy. The action is absolutely relentless, even in the context of the film’s time and place. I don’t think I’ve seen many action movies where the sheer number of violent encounters was quite as exhausting as here, apart from some Indonesian films made forty years or so later.

What Blood and Bullets lacks, at least in comparison with much of the rest of Brescia’s body of work is a sense of weirdness. Brescia’s stranger sensibilities are completely replaced by a willingness to hit genre tropes and plot beats like clockwork. To me, that’s a bit of a disappointment, because I prefer my Brescia weird and woolly. Yet it also is what makes this work as well as it does as a straightforward Eurocrime film, made with a total commitment to entertaining its audience with the low-brow but always effective charms of copious violence, tough guy posturing, a bit of sex and a nasty disposition.

Three Films Make A Post: In the wilderness you can't dial 911

Mask Maker aka Maskerade (2010): If you're in the mood for a pretty generic slasher, Griff Furst's Mask Maker should scratch that itch well enough. It's competently directed and acted, features the obligatory mini role for Michael Berryman, has a smidgen of gore, even a bit of atmosphere, an impressively crappy ending, steals/quotes from many a more original film, and even has one or two scenes that are actually suspenseful instead of reminding you of other movies' suspense. If this sounds a bit like damning with faint praise, that's a fair assessment of my tone. For what the film is, though, it's perfectly watchable.

Cry of Death aka Carogne si nasce aka If One Is Born A Swine…Kill Him (1968): Talking of films that aren't exactly brimming with originality, house favourite Alfonso Brescia delivers a Spaghetti western with slight mystery elements. While the film's supposed twists and surprises are anything but surprising, Fausto Rossi's photography is pretty good, Glenn Saxson and Gordon Mitchell (as a gunman with a most disturbing smile and the most excellent name of - depending on the version you see - Donkey or Mule) seem to enjoy themselves quite a bit, and Brescia's direction keeps the film generally entertaining and somewhat stylish. As it goes with competent films, there are two or three stronger scenes that seem to belong to a more intense and complex movie.

Entity (2012): The final film in our Trilogy of Competence (the anthology movie Amicus never quite got around to make), Steve Stone's Entity is actually a wee bit too good for its companions, what with it ending on a pretty great fifteen minutes that give it something not exactly common in horror movies - a genuinely good and fitting ending that's not pissing away everything that's come before to set up a sequel. The only reason why Entity still belongs in this company (and doesn't warrant a full write-up) is that it still is another "film team stumbles through haunted industrial building" movie, containing exactly the kind of scares you'd expect from it, only really distinguishing itself by rather more than just decent acting (particularly Charlotte Riley and Dervla Kirwan are strong), and the decision to use some elements of the POV sub genre yet to still go for a more standard filming style. It would have been great if the visible talent of Stone and his cast had been used for horrors of a rather less trite sort, but one can always hope for the next movie. This one is at the very least worth watching once, which is more than a lot of industrial building strollers manage.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,italian movies,british movies,in short,horror,spaghetti western,griff furst,michael berryman,alfonso brescia,glenn saxson,gordon mitchell,steve stone,dervla kirwan,charlotte riley

Beast in Space (1980)

Space Force Captain Larry Madison (Alfonso Brescia veteran Vasili Karis in the expected role) is a perfect example of manly manhood: short like an especially unimpressive piece of shrub, studly as a pornstar, hitable like William Shatner. On one of his shore leave adventures, Captain Larry lands in bed with Sondra (Sirpa Lane). The woman has more trouble than just a dubious taste in men - she has nightly dreams of getting lost on a strange planet, dining with a finely dressed guy in a castle, having sex, and fleeing through the alien woods (which look a lot like bog standard birch woods to me). She's quite sure that her dreams are more than normal nightmares, but telling heroic Captain Larry about it and watching him fall asleep to her troubles is all she'll get.

The hero's hero has more important things to do anyway - his newest mission will lead him and the crew of his new ship to a planet where the incredibly rare metal antalium can be found. And wouldn't you know? Sondra, or Lt. Richardson as she is called when she is dressed, is Larry's new route officer (Brescia for navigator, I suppose).

After the ship nearly crashes on the missions's target planet, Captain Larry and his crew stumble over its surface in search of their precious metal. Too bad that this is the planet Sondra has dreamt of and that the rest of her dreams is going to come true, too, with added satyrs, mind-controlling super computers, the erotic power of horse sex and quite a bit of nakedness.

After making a perfectly nonsensical (and incredibly awe-inspiring) quartet of SF films whose mere existence is only explainable by combining the Italian film industry, dadaism and the Situationist International in one conspiracy theory, every normal director would have been satisfied with his or her part in the history of the genre. Not so Alfonso Brescia. After a short pause (aka making two non SF films in about three weeks), the master returned to the genre, taking the final logical step in his body of work - making a pornographic SF film which he (or the producers) tried to sell as some kind of sequel to Walentin Borowczyk's The Beast.

Surprisingly enough, he produced a film with a certain amount of coherence (I'd even let myself go so far as to speak of "logic"), a certain amount of style, and his usual amount of inexplicable weird shit. Besides the (plot relevant, I shit you not) sex, the viewer is given a kind of best of the effects scenes from Brescia's earlier films. Cynical persons might interpret that as a cheapskate way to get any effects at all into the film, completely overlooking the wondrous pieces of wood and papiermache we haven't seen before, or the hairy satyr legs and ass that are most certainly new to this film.

And yes, it's all cheap and shoddy as hell, but made with a real enthusiasm that's absolutely disarming if you are inclined to be disarmed by the idea of things more than by their "good" execution; and yes, the dialog is terrible (and even less competently dubbed than usual in Italian films); and yes the acting is dubious at best.

But - and this is what is really important in art, right? - it's all made with the strange conviction of people who can't see any real difference between making a quick buck and making really interesting art that, yes, you can make a pornographic SF interpretation of a film which itself already re-interpreted a fairytale with a bit more sex than many viewers were comfortable with. You can do it, just with a handful of people ready to shed their clothes, scenes from and the sets of films you made a year ago and a complete lack of respect for the ways films are supposed to be made.

Alfonso Brescia, I bow before you.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,alfonso brescia,sf,exploitation,reviews

Conqueror of Atlantis (1965)

Hercules (Kirk Morris, this time dubbed into Heracles, which makes sense) is the victim of a shipwreck. Fortunate as he is, he washes up on a desert beach, right in front of beautiful princess Virna (Luciana Gilli). Obviously she can't take her eyes off the mostly naked male beauty before her and promptly falls in love with Herc as does he with her - at least as much as he is able to, having by my count had about 123 girlfriends before her. It doesn't seem to matter much anyway. She has to get to her father's camp, while Hercules should better trot into the other direction. All the longing glances let the two forget things like giving Hercules water and food to help him survive a walk through the desert, but don't fear for him. This is the kind of desert people routinely cross in broad daylight without water or shelter, as we'll see throughout the rest of the film. After Virna and her entourage are already gone, our hero finds a ring belonging to the princess lying in the sand, so he starts to wander through the desert after her caravan. He finds a group of nomads under attack by bandits instead. Being Hercules, he of course helps the nomads fight off their attackers.

His new friends take him to their leader Karr (Andrea Scotti) and after some male bonding procedures no tent can survive (damn, is there a homoerotic subtext here!?) the two become fast friends.

Another bandit attack, during which Herc shows a surprising amount of tactical acumen, and Karr tells the sad tale of his peace-loving people, who are regularly attacked by the men of evil nomad king Assour (Mahmoud El-Sabbaa). Assour is of course Virna's father.

Hercules (after showing un-American insight into the uselessness of torture) promises Karr that he'll take care of Assour.

A visit to Assour is rather fruitful - his attacks are revenge for supposed raids by Karr, raids that only leave dead bodies and stolen gold in their wake.

When Assour, Karr and Hercules finally understand that this is just a plan by a different enemy to keep them separated, said enemy attacks. If Assour and Karr had just talked with each other before. Or had sent each other messages...

The true enemy of the desert people are the Atlanteans, the last survivors of Atlantis, now residing in an underground city on top of a volcano.

The Atlanteans are in dire need of a queen and Virna looks fit enough for the job, so they kidnap her. Hercules and Karr pursue them and stumble into a Flash Gordon serial: The golden skinned men in the blue rompers who kidnapped Virna aren't exactly Atlanteans. They are instead the reanimated and gold-plated corpses of asphyxiated desert nomads, whom the only surviving male Atlantean Ramir (Piero Lulli), obviously the twin brother of Ming the Merciless, uses as mindless slaves.

The Atlanteans have a problem, you see: They are immortal, yet there aren't many of them left - besides Ramir, there is only the queen and barely a dozen female "warriors" with psychedelically coloured whigs. Personally, I wouldn't try to solve my population problem by kidnapping another queen, but what do I know about things like that.

Many (or competent) they are not, but they have great plans. They want to build an army of Golden Phantoms (the official name of the gold-skinned guys) to CONQUER THE WORLD!

A devious plan that would probably succeed if not for Hercules. Or Ramir's hobby to show prisoners around his lab and explain his fantastic contraptions, like a blaster (which Hercules will later put to good use), a machine that robs people of their will or gives it back again (which Hercules will later put to good use) and a machine that regulates the gas streams of the volcano (which Hercules will later - you get the gist).

Before the movie is over the excited viewer will experience many things, including: Feats of strength! Men fighting golden phantoms with the large iron ball and chains that they use like bolas! The explosive truth about cities build over volcanoes! The fact that Atlanteans lose their immortality when they fall in love (because it's forbidden and they get shot afterwards)! Daring escapes! A cackling mad scientist! And more!

 

Young Alfonso Brescia doesn't disappoint. As we all should know, Brescia would later go on to film a few mad and/or dadaist SF films and invent the SF porn genre and has a big place in my heart as one of the great holy fools of cinema.

At the point in his career when he made Conqueror of Atlantis he seems to have been still rather sane. Someone with my lowered expectations regarding logic can't help but call the plot here sensible, even logical, as if Brescia had actually tried to make a film that does make a certain amount of sense. Well, if you are able to overlook a few pesky things, like the dubious intelligence of the bad guys, or the bizarre nature of their culture or their plans, but really, who cares about those things when there is a wonderful lab to look at, and women wearing, um, things and undead cyborgs with golden skin dressed like toddlers and soldiers who use spears when they could use blasters. And so on and so on. Which is my longwinded way of saying that the script is absolutely awesome in its wrongheadedness and that the pulpy nonchalance with which it switches from peplum in the desert into Flash Gordon mode is a true joy to behold.

What else can I say about a Brescia film I have not already said elsewhere? The editing is either grotesquely inept or brilliant: There are important transitions missing and everything seems to move just outside the normal way time and space work. There are actors, some of them even seem to have an idea what they are supposed to be doing. Kirk Morris makes a fine Flash Hercules, even if the does not let him throw any pillars around and Piero Lulli knows what's important when playing an evil genius: Ranting, cackling and ominously staring into the camera.

Conqueror of Atlantis is a fine film when you want to relive some of the beauties of classic serials, or if you want to start your education in the works of maestro Brescia, but don't want to dive into the headier stuff at once. Or if you want to have an exceedingly fun time.

 

Technorati-Tags: peplum,adventure,italian movies,reviews,piero lulli,kirk morris,alfonso brescia