Deadly Sweet (1967)

AKA Col Cuore in Gola
Directed by Tinto Brass
Starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ewa Aulin, Roberto Bisacco
Unrated
Italy

"I'll make you piss blood."

Giovanni "Tinto" Brass is probably best known by film fans for his ass-centric erotic films or perhaps having a hand in the infamously maligned period piece, Caligula (of which he had his name removed after post-production tinkering by Bob Cuccione added hardcore sex to the film and altered much of Brass's original ideas). But, if we look a little further back, we will see that Brass wasn't always the type of filmmaker that he is now considered to be.

During the formative years of Mr Brass's film-making career (1963 - 1971), his output leaned more towards the avant-garde, with not-so -subtle forays into putting his own twist on whatever was popular at the time. Take for instance the movie at hand (and also my first Tinto Brass experience), 1967's Deadly Sweet. Also known as Col Cuore In Gola, I Am What I Am, Heart Beat, With Heart in Mouth, or your choice of at least 8 other titles, Deadly Sweet is a product of it's time in many ways. Not only do we have the groovy, spastic dancing club scene covered, but we also get plenty of inconsequential pop art insertions , and hints of noir and giallo to boot. Behind all this stylistic excess, there is indeed a story here, as ultimately unimportant as it may be.

It all begins in a morgue, where a family is viewing the dead body of a man of whom we are made aware is the father of lead vixen, Jane Burroughs (played by the stunningly beautiful Ewa Aulin), her brother Jerome (Charles Kohler), and husband of the children's step-mother, Martha (Vira Silenti). The death appears to be an accident, but Jane goes so far as to suspect that he was murdered. The motive behind his death, she believes, has to do with a photo. A photo of what, we are yet uncertain, but it is obviously quite incriminating if it's very existence can drive someone to kill.

With a few quick shots of the bustling city at night, we cut to the opening credits, made complete by a groovy Brit-pop theme song from Armando Trovaioli - a prolific mainstay in the world of Italian cinema scores.

As the credits fade, we are immediately dropped into a dance club where the Burroughs family is attempting to lessen the blow of their loss with dance and drink. An actor by the name of Bernard (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) eyes Jane from across the room and learns more about her from an unusually knowledgeable club goer. Being all the more intrigued, he immediately goes to make his move, but finds she has already left. He hurriedly goes to pay his tab so that he can chase Jane down, but learns that his credit is no good anymore. Bummer.

Bernard intends to pay a visit to the owner of the club, whose name is Prescott, to inquire as to why his bar tab was cut off. Upon entering Prescott's office, he finds the man dead on the floor - bashed in the head with a statuette. As he examines the corpse, he discovers Jane standing in the corner of the room. She quickly declares her innocence and proceeds to give Bernard a pouty, doe-eyed stare. Already being enamoured by her beauty, he wastes no time at all in believing what she says and takes it upon himself to protect her.

Whisking her away to his crib, it doesn't take long for Jane and Bernard to get on with the sweet lovin'.

From that point on, it's all about the two lovers on the run from the baddies, more sweet 60's lovemaking and the usual "is she telling the truth or is she playing me for a fool" vibe. Nothing particularly inventive, but enjoyable nonetheless.

At the very least, I can say that Deadly Sweet has made me interested in seeing more of what Tinto Brass has to offer, as his directorial skills are quite evident here and easily make up for any shortcomings this particular film might have.

As with almost every Italian giallo, Deadly Sweet is slightly bogged down by convoluted plot details and red herrings. Aside from these typical inclusions, my only real complaint comes from the occasional slapstick comedy elements thrown in from time to time, but even with those mood breaking moments, I can forgive Deadly Sweet. If you are a giallo fan or have a proclivity towards semi-experimental Italian cinema, I recommend Deadly Sweet not only for it's stylish direction, but also for it's alluring lead actress who does a great job at playing the seductive innocent in danger.

Cult Epics has done a great job at bringing this film to light in a wonderfully remastered transfer. For Italian thriller fans, and Tinto Brass fans especially, this is a must own.

- Jeremy Vaca

Murder Rock (1984)

AKA Slashdance
Directed by Lucio Fulci
Starring Olga Karlotos, Maria Vittoria Tolazzi, Gerette Geretta
Rated R
Italy

"You've got to grit your teeth and dance, even when you're friends die!"

The work of Italian splatter-master Lucio Fulci has been praised, critiqued, damned and dissected for decades thanks to the enduring cult appeal of gut-spillers like Zombie (1979), Gates of Hell (1980), The Beyond (1981), and the notorious New York Ripper (1982). But like many Italian directors, Fulci was incredibly prolific, and he dipped his toes into many different genres over his five-decade career, from spy thrillers to post-apocalyptic gladiator romps. He also helmed his share of giallos, as well, including this high 80's pseudo-slasher, a sort of spandex-packed Suspiria-lite that plays like a jazzercize-y workout video with bonus boobs and bloodshed. While it is certainly not the grue-stained maestro's best work, this restrained little whodunit does show a more mature side to Fulci, especially given his  proclivity for show-stopping ultra-violence. But how well does ol' Lucio wear maturity? Let's find out.

 One of Murder Rocks's most dominant traits is its godawful soundtrack, composed by Keith Emerson - a long way from ELP - and performed by Emerson and a caterwauling singer named Doreen Carter. The titles are a good indication to the banality of the songs - "Tonight is the Night", "You Are Not Alone Tonight", "Not So Innocent", etc.Ick. Emerson manages to squeeze out two of these disco/AOR/synth-rock mashups within the first ten or so minutes of the movie. At least the second song is accompanied by girls in leotards.

  The film takes place at a prestigious New York City ballet school, where a clutch of overachieving dance students are up for a career-making spot in some Broadway-bound dance revue. Only three of the eight (or so, I lost count) girls are getting picked for the show, so there's a major rivalry going on. Like in Fame. At the same time, a killer is on the loose.

 Said killer finds one of the girls, Susan (Angela Lemerman), in the shower (right before she's running around in the killer combination of leg warmers and nothing else) and, after chloroforming her, sticks a bejeweled pin through her boob and stabs her right through the heart.

 Seen-it-all detective Borges (Cosimo Cinieri) is summoned to investigate, while the rest of the troupe attempts to carry on without their fellow student.

Another student, Janice (Carla Buzzanca), does an awesome Flashdance rip-off routine at what looks like a piano bar.

 The camera mostly focuses on her vagina, which is nice. Afterwards she goes home and finds Susan's boyfriend Will (Christian Borromeo) lurking around.  But then he vanishes, and somebody stabs her canary to death. And then she gets snuffed, too.

 Borges continues his investigation. "Could it be a paranoid who hates dancers?" He muses. Don't all paranoids hate dancers?

 Dance coach/potential victim number 3 Candace (Olga Karlotos) has a dream about a dude chasing her around and sticking her with her pins. She sees the dude on a billboard, figures out who he is - he's an actor/model named George (Ray Lovelock) - and goes to visit him at a flophouse. He spooks her when he stumbles in the room drunk, and she splits, leaving her purse. Seems random, but it makes sense later.  Meanwhile, Det Borges visits the boys in the lab, who tell him they've got the killer's voice on tape, since he's been calling and taunting them, ala Zodiac. So that's happening.

Candace calls George, and he brings her purse back. Then they have lunch together. Chemistry! Borges drags the gay kid in the dance troupe in, and after slapping him around, he confesses to the murders, even though it wasn't really him. He just made the phonecalls to get famous. Seems viable.

 Meanwhile, Candace and George get it on. He comes by to see her at the school, and one of the students, Gloria, (Belinda Busato) runs up to him and makes-out with him. So that was weird.

 He tells Candace that he and Gloria used to model together. If that's not weird enough, a Chinese fortune teller calls George a murderer, and later that evening, Candace's agent calls her and tells her that once, a few years back, George was banging an underage girl and she died mysteriously soon after. So things aren't looking good for George.

And then Candace almost gets the pin-death courtesy her co-coach Margie (the awesomely named Gerreta Geretta), who hates her. She figured she'd copycat the killer, and no one would expect. But it turns out she doesn't have it in her.

And then another dancer, Jill (Maria Vittoria Tollazi), gets it! But her paralyzed little sister takes photos. So there's a clue involved.

 And then Gloria - who's the last girl-dancer left -  rides to school on her bike, while wearing a fur coat. Classy! Meanwhile, the boys at the lab develop the kid's pics, but all they get is the killer's torso. Not too helpful.

 And then Jill's brother Bob yells at Gloria for being a whore, and then limps away. Seconds later, she gets the booby-pin.

 So then only Candace and George are left. So it's got to be one of them. And it is!

There's a couple of red herrings tossed into the mix here, but the motive for all the killing is fairly obvious, and there's not enough suspects to keep you guessing, so the mystery quotient of Murder Rock is pretty thin. Also, unlike the majority of Fulci's horror films, there's no real gore and very little bloodshed. Nudity is minimal as well. So what's left? Well, pretty girls. And dancing. There's plenty of dancing. Dancing and Keith Emerson's awful giallo-jams. That may be enough for Fulci obsessives, but sleaze-beasts looking for a primo spandex-slasher will want to skip this tepid workout and head straight for the sleazy, sexed-up Killer Workout instead.

- Ken McIntyre

Run Like Hell (1995)

Directed by Robert Rundle

Starring Elizabeth Lamont, Liz Davies, Colleen Corrigan, Robert Z'Dar

Unrated 

USA

"We'll have to fuck 'em for guns."

"Oh, we'll fuck them all right. Just not the way they're expecting."

Mutant-jawed Robert Z'Dar toplines this sexed-up, no-budget, post-apoc mess as the scuzzball warden of a women's prison. The plotline is delightfully senseless, but it goes something like this: in the near-future (now the past - it takes place in 2008!), single women are rounded up and incarcerated in brutal work camps because they're deemed too dangerous for society. Why? Who knows. Boner problems, maybe. A ragtag group of plucky prisoners break out of Z'Dar's prison and go on the lam. He hires ridiculous bounty hunters to chase them down. Hijinks ensue. 

In the opening scene, Z'Dar - looking as fucking crazy as ever - watches on his futuristic 2008 video monitors as a couple prisoners shower. Two things stick out - first, it's clear from the beginning that the producers nabbed the Maniac Cop star for one day - maybe even half a day - and shot all of his scenes in one take. Secondly, while it's a good sign to see boobs within three minutes of the movie's starting time, who takes showers in their thongs? 

After getting thoroughly chubbed up by the sensual two-girl shower, Warden (that's the warden's name - Warden!) orders the girls in to his office for the expressed purpose of raping them both. 

However, he is soon overpowered by the scrappy duo, who bash his skull with a truncheon and bail. They meet up with two other prisoners, and the four of 'em skulk around the office-building-masquerading-as-a-prison, picking off guards and snatching their guns. Did I mention that they're all topless, barefoot, and be-thonged? 

They make it outside - luckily, the door was unlocked - and cross some railroad tracks. In their bare feet! Ouch. That gravel had to hurt. Eventually, they stumble onto a guard shack/tent. Using their feminine wiles, they seduce and manhandle the two goofy idiot guards, taking their guns (didn't they already have enough?) and, inexplicably, finding a bunch of clothes that fit them all perfectly. 

So then they get dressed. Bummer. And then they shoot the guards, for about ten minutes.

This wears them out, so they build a campfire and go to sleep. Before their well-deserved snooze, however, they all decide that they're going to head for Paradise City where, we can only presume, the grass is green and the girls are pretty. 

They wake up to find a cowboy fighting a ninja. Why not? The ninja wins and suggests he tag along with them, because the mutants come out at night, and they'll need his protection. Sounds viable. By the way, Ninja wears his Ninja mask all the time, so all his lines are muffled.

Meanwhile, Warden sends a bounty hunter and a goony "droid" to chase after the girls. The bounty hunter dresses like the terminator. The droid has some sort of apparatus strapped to his head. Or maybe its' the other way around, hard to say. At any rate, that's going on, as well. 

Not all of the girls survive their first few days in the wastelands. It's pretty tough out there. Ninja decides they need kung fu training before they go any further. So that's what they do. 

There's also a couple subplots going on. One involves another bounty hunter wandering around with a girl in 80's rock video jeans. Nothing much happens there. I think they just crowbarred that bit in because the girl has awesome pants. 

Another one has something to do with a prison guard who's dresses like a gay porn stud. He's got a brothel in the prison bathroom. He likes to make the girls dance topless while he fiddles with his nightstick. That sounds like a euphemism, but that's actually what he does. 

Also, did I mention the topless fight club in the basement? 

And the chainsaw-wielding "Arena of Death" match in the desert? 

Of course, with all this madness going on, you are surely wondering whether our heroines ever make it to Paradise City. Well, let me ask you this: do any of us ever make it to Paradise City? Life's a journey, man. Not a destination. 

While it always looks more like outsider art than an actual film made by sane individuals, and the budget could not have topped a week's paycheck, I can't really fault director Rundle for anything. He had a vision, and a camcorder, and he went for it. Likewise the cast gives it their all, whether bashing each other in the face, or rolling around in a swamp, or tromping around under a hot sun wearing nothing but dollar-store thongs, this is one seriously committed acting troupe. For their sakes, I suggest you watch this nutty little 80 minute time-waster. Don't let their considerable efforts go in vain. While Run Like Hell is neither the greatest film ever made or the worst, there are moments throughout when it is both. 

Plus, there's boobs galore. Galore! 

- Ken McIntyre

Bloodtide (1982)

AKA Demon Island
Directed by Richard Jeffries
Starring James Earl Jones, Deborah Shelton, Lydia Cornell, Martin Kove
Rated R
USA

"Get me a melon!"

There's probably a good backstory to this mish-mash of a movie. It lurches so radically from one genre to another that it positively reeks of studio tampering. My guess is that it was originally supposed to be directed by visionary Greek filmmaker Nico Mastorakis, writer/director of the legendarily misanthropic Island of Death (1975), but then James Earl Jones or somebody balked at the script - which was probably loaded with child sacrifice and goat-rape - and the studio quickly shuttled harmless TV movie everyman Richard Jeffries to clean up the ensuing holy mess. As it stands, Jeffries is credited at director and co-writer, but all the weirder bits look like the work of madman Nico. Too bad there's not more of them.

The patchwork story involves one Madeline Grice (Brunette stunner Deborah Shelton), an archeologist (?) of some stripe, who ventures to a tiny Greek island to study some religious artwork. The people of this tiny island community are a suspicious lot who routinely stage mock sacrifices to appease a vengeful undersea god, but Maddy manages to find an ally in a sympathetic nun, who helps her on her quest to find whatever artifacts she's looking for. When she finds the elusive religious icon painting she's been seeking, she notices that it's got another painting underneath it, and another under that, each successively alarming monster-on-girl image dating further and further back into the island's checkered past. So that's weird.

Equally weird is the presence of Frye (James Earl Jones), a belligerent, chauvinistic adventurer and treasure seeker, who is hoping to uncover a lost reservoir of gold. I think that's what he's doing there. At any rate, he spends most of his time eating melons, guzzling hooch, and banging his gorgeous blonde galpal/assistant, Barbara (Lydia Cornell, Too Close for Comfort). Madeline parties with them, but lately she's been getting increasingly spaced out.

Into this already unlikely mix wanders Maddy's brother Neil (blow-dried 80's beefcake (Martin Kove, Cagney and Lacey) and his wife Sherry (Mary Louise Weller, Animal House). Concerned about Madeline's silence, bro decides to pay his bookworm sister a visit to make sure she's ok. When he arrives, he finds her dazed and confused. When Sherry offers her a present of expensive perfume, she dumps the entire bottle out on her head, and she seems to have an unhealthy fixation with the strange multi-layered painting and it's undersea monster-sex implications.

Meanwhile, some of the locals have begun to go missing. The villagers suspect that all this outsider meddling has roused the island's ancient evil sea-demon, and now he's gleefully gobbling up whoever he can. Their fears are realized when a group of men - gathered to watch a topless Barbara jiggle on the beach - witness her being dragged under the water and viciously eviscerated.

If that's not bad enough, Madeline is determined to swim right into the clutches of the beast, presumably for mating purposes.

It's up to Neil and a constantly soused Frye to rescue Madeline, avenge Barbara, and rid this tiny island of the blood-mad monster. How will they do it? Dynamite, how else?

If you're wondering whether you actually get to see the monster or not, the answer is yeah, sort of.  In one shot, it looks like the cover of a Danzig record. In another, it's a fleshy underwater chicken. Clearly, it's only viewed briefly for a reason. Also, the fact that Frye neatly destroys the bird-frog-man-demon with one stick of TNT suggests that perhaps the villagers were just too lazy to do it themselves. I mean, this thing is no Creature from the Black Lagoon. It pretty much goes down without a fight.

Luckily, this movie isn't actually about the monster. If it was, we'd be in serious trouble. No, Bloodtide is mostly about hot chicks in bikinis and/or sweaty tank tops, booze, and James Earl Jones in a wet suit, acting like a complete fucking asshole. It's part monster flick, part thriller, part black comedy. It's senseless and messy and drags in places, but staring at Deb Shelton in full bloom is such is a treat that it's worth the odd moments of utter confusion and/or brain-draining boredom. As mentioned, if Nico was allowed to run riot with this one, we'd surely have another Island of Death on our hands - a film banned just about everywhere, and for good reason - but unfortunately, the end result is a skin n' gore-free romp with a 70's TV movie feel. Sensible types will find nothing of interest, but Bloodtide is well worth it for 80's b-queen oglers and anyone interested in poking at the skeletons in James Earl Jones' closet.



- Ken McIntyre