SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD aka MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (Italy - 1978; US release 1979) Directed by Sergio Martino. Written by Cesare Frugoni and Sergio Martino. Cast: Ursula Andress, Stacy Keach, Claudio Cassinelli, Antonio Marsina, Franco Fantasia, Lanfranco Spinola, Carlo Longhi, Luigina Rocchi, Akushla Sellajaah, T.M. Munna, M. Suki, Dudley Wanaguru, Gianfranco Coduti. (R, 85 mins/Unrated, 103 mins) Not as consistently disgusting as some of its more notorious contemporaries in the Italian cannibal craze, Sergio Martino's 1978 contribution MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD is almost a mondo take on a traditional jungle adventure for most of its duration. That's especially the case in its significantly truncated US version, retitled SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD and released on the drive-in circuit by a relatively fledgling, pre-Freddy Krueger New Line Cinema in the spring and summer of 1979. Both versions--Martino's full-strength 103-minute director's cut and New Line's 85-minute US re-edit--are on Code Red's just-released SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD Blu-ray (because physical media is dead), and they offer a study in contrasts where each has its own unique strengths, the US cut in part because New Line saw fit to trim some of the fat. Indeed, the R-rated, 85-minute cut is better-paced and eliminates a talky early scene at the British consulate that ultimately makes no sense in the longer version. And while it retains a surprising amount of onscreen animal killing--always the major deterrent when it comes to one's ability to enjoy this type of tawdry exploitation fare--it suffers from almost complete lack of any graphic gut-munching, usually leaving the aftermath or reaction shots of other actors. In Martino's version, one major character is disemboweled and devoured, with a lingering shot of what feels like a mile of intestinal tract being yanked out of his gut, while in the US cut, it's reduced to one distant shot of the tribe chieftain holding up the victim's heart. Likewise, a graphic castration shown in Martino's version is merely implied in the US cut. The biggest difference in the uncut version is the inclusion of a CALIGULA-esque cannibal orgy, with some up-close and borderline pornographic footage of a young tribal woman masturbating along with some simulated bestiality involving a tribesman and a large pig. These shots were included in Martino's reconstructed version originally released by Anchor Bay back in the halcyon days of the Eurocult DVD explosion, and are understandably nowhere to be found in New Line's American cut. At the end of the day, regardless of which version of SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD you watch, both are trashy enough to make you wonder what the hell Stacy Keach and Ursula Andress are doing in it.
Andress is wealthy Susan Stevenson, who arrives in New Guinea with her younger brother Arthur (Antonio Marsina) in search of her missing explorer husband Henry (played in photos by perennial Eurocult bit player Tom Felleghy). They believe he was headed for the cursed mountain of Ra-Rami on the island of Roka, but the British consulate refuses to authorize a search and rescue mission. They instead direct her to Dr. Edward Foster (Keach), an anthropologist who happens to have been a close associate of Henry's (if you're wondering why she didn't just go to him in the first place, the US cut completely removes the ultimately pointless sequence at the British consulate) and is the only person who's been to Ra-Rami and made it back alive. Foster agrees to guide them on the treacherous trek to Roka, though tensions soon flare between him and the obnoxious Arthur and they're eventually joined by rugged adventurer Manolo (Martino regular Claudio Cassinelli). Foster confesses that he was captured by the Puka, a tribe on Roka, and was forced to partake in their cannibal rituals ("You never forget the taste of human flesh!" Foster cries in what's not one of Keach's most dignified moments), and is going along on the trek not to save Henry, but to wipe out the Puka once and for all. Susan and Arthur have their own secret, as she's not quite the probable grieving widow (she attempts to seduce Manolo), but is instead driven by TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE-esque greed and wiling to put Foster and Manolo at risk, knowing Henry was searching for a massive secret uranium deposit on Roka, and they want those riches for themselves.
The expedition is whittled down, from Foster's native guides getting killed along the way to Keach making an abrupt exit with about 35 minutes to go when an injured Foster falls down a waterfall in one of Eurotrash cinema's more hilarious dummy deaths. Susan, Arthur, and Manolo are captured by the Puka and are introduced to the decaying, oozing corpse of her husband, with a Geiger counter planted in his chest and worshiped like a god by the Puka. Then they're submitted to the usual cannibal ritual antics--Arthur is eaten, Manolo forced to watch, and Susan is stripped nude and given a long, lingering oil and body paint rubdown in a scene that would be repeated with Alexandra Delli Colli in DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. and with Bo Derek in TARZAN THE APE MAN, directed by her husband John Derek, who was once married to--wait for it--Ursula Andress. Martino's version comes to a screeching halt with the X-rated orgy, which really slows things down in a way that makes the third act of the US version move a lot faster, but it's also missing Arthur's disgusting demise, instead relying on Cassinelli reaction shots to convey the horrors taking place. It's worth noting that neither Andress nor Keach are around for the really gross stuff other than an early scene where Foster's guides capture a small crocodile and slice it open for food. Keach is killed off before they even encounter the cannibals, but up to that point, much of the big names' interactions with the horrific onscreen carnage was limited to the magic of the cutting room: the explorers are rowing along a river and someone says "Look!" as Martino cuts to footage of a giant lizard barfing up a snake (that one's not in the New Line version). Martino also gets a thumbs down for a morally bankrupt shot of a monkey being thrown by some rigged mechanism right into the waiting mouth of a large crocodile (that's in the New Line version), essentially negating the oft-repeated argument from directors of these cannibal films that these were examples of "survival of the fittest" caught on camera (some of SLAVE's animal killings were later recycled by Umberto Lenzi for 1980's EATEN ALIVE).
Martino's uncut version looks terrific on Code Red's Blu, and there's an HD transfer of the US cut that's not quite as good in quality but still looks better than it has in any home video incarnation. Keach is on hand for a new interview and expresses no regrets over appearing in the film (this was the same year that his uptight Sgt. Stedenko was a memorable foil to Cheech and Chong in UP IN SMOKE), saying it offered him a chance to work with Andress and to see Sri Lanka. where the exteriors were shot, and where Martino and Cassinelli would return for 1979's THE GREAT ALLIGATOR. He has some vivid memories of the shoot and shares stories about Andress and Cassinelli, and has a good laugh at his ridiculous death scene, but he still doesn't seem to be fully aware of just how foul SLAVE gets in the last third after he was no longer around. 1978 found Keach at the end of a brief sojourn into Eurocult, which included the 1976 gangster thriller STREET PEOPLE and Umberto Lenzi's cheap-looking 1978 WWII saga THE GREATEST BATTLE. But none of those were as dubious as SLAVE OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, where the involvement of respectable actors like Keach and Andress is certainly on par with Henry Fonda in TENTACLES and Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2 in the "How the fuck did this happen?" chronicles of Italian trash cinema.
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? aka THE COED MURDERS (Italy - 1974; US release 1977) Directed by Massimo Dallamano. Written by Ettore Sanza and Massimo Dallamano. Cast: Giovanna Ralli, Claudio Cassinelli, Mario Adorf, Franco Fabrizi, Farley Granger, Marina Berti, Paolo Turco, Corrado Gaipa, Micaela Pignatelli, Ferdinando Murolo, Eleonora Morano, Sherry Buchanan, Roberta Paladini, Renata Moar, Adriana Falco, Lorenzo Piani, Giancarlo Badessi, Steffen Zacharias, Attilio Dottesio. (Unrated, 91 mins) The second film in a loosely-connected trilogy of "schoolgirl in peril" thrillers, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? is a semi-sequel of sorts to 1972's giallo/krimi hybrid WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?, jettisoning the German "krimi" element to instead function as a giallo/poliziotteschi mash-up. Both films were directed and co-written by Massimo Dallamano, who earlier established himself as a top cinematographer for Sergio Leone on A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS and FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE before becoming a filmmaker in his own right. Dallamano was set to direct the third film in the series, 1978's ENIGMA ROSSO, aka RED RINGS OF FEAR, but was killed in a car accident in late 1976 before finishing the script, which was completed by others with directing duties assigned to Alberto Negrin. All three films share the "schoolgirls in peril" motif, but where SOLANGE dealt with a string of brutal murders--where a group of teenage girls are stabbed in the vagina--committed in the wake of an unspeakable, heartbreaking tragedy, DAUGHTERS takes sociopolitical aim at the powers that be in the upper echelon of Italian society, with its darkly misanthropic tone abetted by one of Stelvio Cipriani's top scores, with a chipper-sounding, wordless vocal refrain that, given the subject matter, comes across as incongruously unsettling.
The film opens with the discovery of a nude 15-year-old girl found hanged in a small apartment that appears to be a secret love nest. Insp. Valentini (Mario Adorf) catches the case, but is soon replaced by the more bullish Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli) and his partner Sgt. Giardana (Ferdinando Murolo), who team with deputy D.A. Vittoria Stori (Giovanna Ralli) in their investigation. For much of its first half, DAUGHTERS is more of a polizia-tinged procedural than a giallo, with Silvestri and Stori looking into the background of the dead girl, Silvia (Sherry Buchanan), who they soon discover was murdered at a different location, then taken to the apartment, with her body staged to look like a suicide. They also learn that Silvia was part of a secret teenage prostitution ring, much to the dismay of her wealthy parents, with her mother (Marina Berti) expressing outrage at finding her stash of birth control pills, and her father (Hollywood expat Farley Granger, in one of several gialli he made around this time) remorseful that he loved his daughter but never really tried to get close to her. Before long, the giallo end of the story kicks in as a meat cleaver-wielding hired killer decked out in leather and a black motorcycle helmet starts going after the other girls in the ring as well as any clients who pose a threat at exposing the powerful forces in charge of running it and profiting off the forced sexual servitude of underage girls.
From the beginning, Dallamano pulls no punches with WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? Valentini's reading of the coroner's report on Silvia's murder is graphic, mentioning the semen of multiple men found in her vagina, anus, and stomach, and later on, one scene where Silvestri and Stori listen in shock and disgust to secretly-recorded tapes of teenage girls being subjected to abhorrent sexual violence--including an impotent john who resorts to penetrating the girls with a bottle--is excruciating. With 1970s Italy in constant political upheaval and with crime rampant, there was also an epidemic of teenagers running away from home, disappearing, falling into drug abuse, etc. Secret prostitution rings were a recurring theme in Italian genre fare around this time, as seen in ENIGMA ROSSO as well as Sergio Martino's THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR (1975), which also starred Cassinelli, Paolo Cavara's PLOT OF FEAR (1976), and Carlo Lizzani's bluntly-titled THE TEENAGE PROSTITUTION RACKET (1975), arguably the CHRISTIANE F of Red Brigade-era Italy. DAUGHTERS does an excellent job of balancing its dual polizia and giallo nature, with some dizzying camera work in a couple of chase scenes as well as a terrific suspense set piece with the killer pursuing Stori through a dark parking garage. There's also a few jarring moments of over-the-top splatter (one that prefigures a famous bit in Argento's TENEBRAE) along the way to its appropriately bleak, cynical, and pissed-off ending.
WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? wasn't released in the US until 1977, when short-lived exploitation outfit Peppercorn-Wormser sent it out on the grindhouse and drive-in circuit. It was re-released in 1980 as THE COED MURDERS, but never made it to video stores in VHS' 1980s glory days. It's been difficult to see in America outside of the bootleg circuit until Arrow's recent Blu-ray release with numerous extras, including a commentary by film historian Troy Howarth that takes time to give props to the unsung dubbing heroes revoicing the actors on the English version. Arrow's restoration really does the film justice in its 2.35:1 aspect ratio, of which former cinematographer Dallamano takes full advantage. It also benefits from a strong cast, though one wishes the great Adorf wasn't sidelined for much of the film, even though Cassinelli and Ralli make a fine LAW & ORDER: SVU team. Veteran actress Ralli was back in Italy after a brief attempt to break into Hollywood with James Coburn in the 1966 Blake Edwards farce WHAT DID YOU DO IN THE WAR, DADDY?, the 1967 Stephen Boyd/Yvette Mimieux heist comedy THE CAPER OF THE GOLDEN BULLS, and the 1970 George Peppard actioner CANNON FOR CORDOBA. She's given an especially substantive role, and her casting is practically progressive--perhaps even approaching woke--on the part of Dallamano, considering the unusual notion of a strong, independent female lead in a 1970s Italian polizia, a genre where women usually existed as victims, complaining girlfriends, or abused junkies. Ralli's Stori takes no shit from anyone, is respected by her male colleagues, lives alone, and she and Cassinelli's Silvestri never hook up. Fans of Aldo Lado's NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS will recognize Marina Berti and Franco Fabrizi in familiar roles, with Berti as the distraught mother of a victim and Fabrizi as a voyeuristic Peeping Tom. Also worth noting are some of the young actresses cast as the girls in the prostitution ring, with Mississippi-born Buchanan going on to a reasonably busy Eurotrash career over the next decade (TENTACLES, THE HEROIN BUSTERS, ESCAPE FROM GALAXY 3, DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D.), Micaela Pignatelli co-starring as James Franciscus' wife in Enzo G. Castellari's infamous JAWS ripoff GREAT WHITE, and Renata Moar, whose place in film history would be secured the next year as the girl forced to eat a handful of human excrement in Pier Paolo Pasolini's SALO, a moment preserved on the cover of the film's Criterion release.
At times looking like what might happen if Costa-Gavras made a Eurocrime movie, Luciano Ercoli's KILLER COP is one of the more politically-charged poliziotteschi to come out of Italy in the 1970s. Inspired by the 1969 Piazza Fontana bombing in Milan, the film centers on eccentric narcotics commissioner Rolandi (Claudio Cassinelli), who always carries a copy of Melville's Moby Dick for symbolism at its most cumbersome, being in the wrong place at the wrong time when he stumbles into the bombing while working another case. He subsequently butts heads with Armando "Minty" DiFederico (Arthur Kennedy)--so nicknamed for his Tic Tac habit--the hardass judge assigned to oversee the investigation. Both set aside their differences and work together--but not exactly in an if they don't kill each other first! buddy-movie capacity--when they eventually realize the bombings and the subsequent trail of bodies, starting with likable but mistake-prone detective Balsamo (Franco Fabrizi), point to police and judicial corruption and a cover-up from inside the department. Ercoli (1929-2015) was best known for gialli like THE FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A LADY ABOVE SUSPICION, DEATH WALKS AT MIDNIGHT, and DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS, but KILLER COP is a thoughtful and thoroughly engrossing snapshot of the Red Brigades domestic terrorism affecting Italy at the time and influencing the country's wildly popular polizia genre in particular. Cassinelli has one of his best roles and the great five-time Oscar-nominee Kennedy, in prime "grumpy Arthur Kennedy" mode, is terrific in one of his standout performances from the often-dubious Eurocult phase of his career. The supporting cast includes familiar Eurotrash faces like Sara Sperati (SALON KITTY), Valeria D'Obici (ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX), Enzo Fisichella (THE GREAT ALLIGATOR), Ugo Bologna (NIGHTMARE CITY), and Enzo G. Castellari regular Giovanni Cianfriglia. Stelvio Cipriani's score is one of his greatest. According to IMDb, Jack Lemmon recorded an introductory voiceover narration for the film's US release, but there's nothing on YouTube, Google, or in the liner notes of Raro's 2015 Blu-ray release of the film, to corroborate this highly suspect claim.
KILLER COP was released in the US in 1976 by grindhouse outfit Joseph Green Pictures. It was in regular late-night rotation on Detroit's WGPR Channel 62, which went on the air in 1975 and was the first African-American-owned TV station in the US. It focused on religious programming (the call letters stood for "Where God's Presence Radiates") and niche fare like the talk/variety show ARAB VOICE OF DETROIT, but after hours, the station would air "All Night at the Movies." These were mostly old movies and serials, but at some point in the late '70s, WGPR must've acquired the admittedly limited Joseph Green library, showing their sometimes racy titles uncut in prime 2:00-6:00 am insomniac hours (I can personally attest to the stories in this link: 62 came in fairly clear in the Toledo area and in the early '80s, I caught Jose Gutierrez Maesso's 1975 actioner ORDER TO KILL, which proved to be a watershed moment in my grindhouse education as I witnessed nude Sydne Rome on broadcast TV). WGPR struggled as Detroit's least-watched station until it was purchased by CBS in 1994 and the call letters were eventually changed to WWJ. (R, 97 mins)
SCREAMERS aka SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK (Italy/US - 1981) Directed by Sergio Martino and Miller Drake. Written by Sergio Donati, Cesare Frugoni, Sergio Martino, and Miller Drake. Cast: Barbara Bach, Claudio Cassinelli, Richard Johnson, Beryl Cunningham, Joseph Cotten, Mel Ferrer, Cameron Mitchell, Franco Javarone, Roberto Posse, Giuseppe Castellano, Francesco Mazzieri, Eunice Bolt, Tom J. Delaney, James Alquist, Bobby Rhodes. (R, 90 mins)
The story of how the 1979 Italian fantasy adventure ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN became the 1981 Roger Corman drive-in splatter movie SCREAMERS is one of the more entertaining examples of hucksterism in the annals of exploitation cinema. Just out on Blu-ray and DVD in its SCREAMERS incarnation courtesy of Scorpion Releasing, the circumstances surrounding the metamorphosis of ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN into SCREAMERS are covered in great detail in the set's bonus features. Contrary to popular belief, Roger Corman didn't have anything to do with the changes despite SCREAMERS being released by his New World Pictures. It came to him with the changes already in place. Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick were two veteran B-movie producers of such titles as 1956's CURUCU, BEAST OF THE AMAZON, and both had a hand in bringing Ishiro Honda's GOJIRA (1954) to the US and its restructuring into GODZILLA in 1956. By 1980, Kay and Rybnick were still eking out a living on the fringes of Hollywood, with their company United Producers picking up foreign exploitation fare and frequently retitling them for their second and third runs through American drive-ins and grindhouses (for instance, Pete Walker's 1974 imprisoned-fashion-models thriller HOUSE OF WHIPCORD was twice relaunched via United Producers, first as PHOTOGRAPHER'S MODELS and then as the even more lurid STAG MODEL SLAUGHTER). Kay and Rybnick acquired Sergio Martino's ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN, a bizarre aquatic Italian ripoff of THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU that blended elements of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft, and approached PIRANHA director Joe Dante about beefing it up with some American actors and gory killings. Dante was busy with THE HOWLING at the time and sent the guys to his buddy Miller Drake, a trailer editor at New World who had been wanting to branch out into directing. Drake took the job, recruited cinematographer Gary Graver, a longtime exploitation fixture whose main claim to fame among his friends was working on Orson Welles' shelved and never-released THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WIND in 1972, and assembled a crew comprised mainly of moonlighting New World staffers looking for some quick cash and some additional experience (future TERMINATOR producer and eventual James Cameron ex-wife Gale Anne Hurd is credited on SCREAMERS as "Maui location manager," even though no scenes were shot on Maui). Drake wrote and directed a prologue to be added to the beginning of FISHMEN with Mel Ferrer and Cameron Mitchell, aging warhorses who had been in the business long enough to remember the glory days of Hollywood but were now taking any job that came along if it paid enough, being stalked and killed by slimy creatures that didn't really look like the ones in FISHMEN. Drake was supplied with a $50,000 budget for the prologue and the additional footage was shot in four nights at the caves at Bronson Canyon in Los Angeles' Griffith Park, a favorite location of Corman's going back to the 1950s.
Though Dante, who paid his dues at New World and clearly had bigger fish to fry by this time as he was about to break into the big leagues after THE HOWLING, declined the offer to shoot the new footage and wanted to keep his involvement under the radar, he did help Drake out by editing the footage and overseeing the overhaul of FISHMEN into SCREAMERS. Using the pseudonym "Giuseppe Dantini," Dante worked with Drake to streamline the 99-minute FISHMEN down to its basics, cutting it down to about 75 minutes to work in approximately 12-13 minutes of Drake's footage and a couple of other changes sprinkled throughout, like the addition of one character (James Alquist) who appears briefly only to get killed by one of the fishmen, and a later shot in a laboratory where Drake and soon-to-be-revered makeup effects maestro Chris Walas (THE FLY) replaced a shot of one of Martino's fishmen in a tank with their own, more CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON-ish monster--shot in a makeshift tank in Dante's garage--and the seams barely show until they're pointed out to you by Drake in his interview segment. The film, now running 90 minutes (75 minutes from FISHMEN, 13 minutes of Drake's material, plus new credits) was retitled SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK, given a new English dub (star Claudio Cassinelli dubs himself in FISHMEN, Italian accent intact, but has been revoiced by someone else for SCREAMERS) and even though it wasn't a slasher film, that's how Kay and Rybnick wanted it marketed, and they began shopping it around to distributors. Because of their knowing Dante and Drake having used a number of off-the-clock New World guys, Corman was happy to take it off their hands. And that's where things got really interesting.
Original 1979 Italian ISLAND OF
THE FISHMEN poster art.
Using United Producers' artwork and assorted promo material, Corman sent SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK out to ten drive-ins in Virginia for a test run and it bombed. Refusing to lose money on an investment, he pulled the film from distribution for a marketing overhaul that was assigned to New World advertising honcho and future filmmaker Jim Wynorski. With SCANNERS being an early 1981 hit, Wynorski proposed the title SCREAMERS and it stuck. He devised an ad campaign that made it look completely American, with Cassinelli renamed "Charles Cass," FISHMEN producer Luciano Martino changed to "Lawrence Martin," and a non-existent "Dan T. Miller" credited as director (the original Italian names remained intact in the film itself). Most importantly, the new one-sheet boasted "Be warned: You will actually see a man turned inside out!" and on a Sunday afternoon, Wynorski quickly shot a TV spot that featured just one quick opening shot of actress Eunice Bolt screaming from the new SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK scenes and no footage whatsoever from ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. Instead, it featured Wynorski's then-girlfriend running around the still-standing sets from the same year's GALAXY OF TERROR and a quick shot of a monster thrown together by his pal Rob Bottin (soon to make his mark with his makeup work on THE HOWLING and John Carpenter's THE THING) for free as a favor to Wynorski. A few weeks later, Corman picked Georgia for the new test run, and blitzed Atlanta and the surrounding areas with Wynorski's TV spot and sent out ten prints of the newly-christened SCREAMERS and its second test run was a smash hit. But there was a problem: exhibitors and customers were furious that there was no scene of a man being turned inside out. Word got back to Corman, who told Wynorski that the scene needed to be there. The prints were recalled, and the shot of the Bottin monster from the TV spot and a couple of additional test footage shots were spliced into the fourth reel when Cassinelli is peeking in some various doors in a hallway. More prints were struck, and SCREAMERS became a decent drive-in and grindhouse hit in the summer of 1981. Unless you saw SCREAMERS on the big screen in 1981, you've never seen the complete "man turned inside out" footage. When Corman had the Bottin monster from the TV spot spliced into the existing prints, no one bothered splicing it into the negative. The prints are long gone. The footage isn't in the negative, and it was the negative that was used for the Embassy Home Entertainment VHS release in the '80s and the subsequent interpositive utilized for the new Scorpion release (Dante, in his interview segment, is under the mistaken impression that the footage has been restored).
"Look, do you understand that I was
in CITIZEN KANE?"
SCREAMERS is definitely an improvement over the lethargic ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN. Opening in 1891 with the prologue as broke fortune hunter Radcliffe (Ferrer) charters a boat to a Caribbean island captained by wily old sea salt Decker (Mitchell) only to have the entire party offed by rampaging fishmen in an orgy of throat-slashing, disemboweling, and decapitations, the action quickly shifts to Martino's original film, also set in the Caribbean in 1891, after the sinking of a prison ship, with a small band of survivors led by the doc in charge, Lt. Claude de Ross (Cassinelli). They end up on the titular island of the fishmen, which is home to the fortress-like compound of the dastardly Edmund Rackham (a hammy Richard Johnson). Rackham believes the island lies over the ruins of Atlantis, and tells de Ross that the Fishmen are the amphibious descendants of the original inhabitants of Atlantis. Of course, he's lying. The fishmen are actually mutants created from the remains of dead men by doddering, senile mad scientist Professor Marvin (Joseph Cotten), who believes he's doing altruistic work in abetting humanity's adaptation to the world's future (perhaps the insane doc was an early proponent of climate change?). In reality, Marvin and his daughter Amanda (Barbara Bach) are being held prisoner as Marvin's gill-man creations are being used to raid Atlantis--depicted in miniatures that would make Antonio Margheriti turn away in shame--for the endless buried treasures desired by the despicable Rackham.
This is the original fishman-in-progress creature discovered
in a tank in Prof. Martin's laboratory in ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN, but
Richard Kay and Harry Rybnick didn't like the design, so
it was replaced with...
...this creature, designed by Chris Walas, for an insert shot
done by Miller Drake in a makeshift tank in Joe Dante's garage
In its original form, ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN was a harmlessly goofy adventure with a little violence but minimal gore. It would've easily gotten a PG rating in America, but Kay and Rybnick told Drake they wanted R-rated gore and splatter but, being the old-schoolers that they were, weren't interested in nudity (Drake says he could've easily gotten Bolt, as Radcliffe's female companion, to go topless, but the old-timers shot it down). The SCREAMERS prologue delivers splatter and then some, with Mitchell getting his gut sliced open, Ferrer's throat being ripped out, and another guy getting his head torn off in graphic detail. The biggest cuts Dante and Drake made to FISHMEN in their streamlining it into SCREAMERS was cutting out a good chunk of Beryl Cunningham's screen time as Shakira, a priestess who spends most of FISHMEN blathering on about voodoo and accomplishing little more than slowing the movie down until Martino and co-writers Sergio Donati and Cesare Frugoni finally find a use for her in the climax.
Bach may have been a minor factor in whatever success was enjoyed by SCREAMERS. It's surprising New World didn't play up her involvement a little more, considering that in the summer after John Lennon's murder, anything involving the Beatles was big news, and right around the time of SCREAMERS' release, Bach was a ubiquitous media presence thanks to her marriage to Ringo Starr after the two became an item while shooting the surprise hit comedy CAVEMAN, which hit theaters a couple months before SCREAMERS. Bach's potential breakout role as a Bond girl in 1977's THE SPY WHO LOVED ME got her the global notoriety that came with being a Bond girl, but like many of her predecessors, it evaporated quickly, and by 1979, she was back doing the same European B-movies she was prior to her time with 007, starting with back-to-back aquatic horrors with Martino, first FISHMEN and then THE BIG ALLIGATOR RIVER, which debuted in America on CBS in 1982 as THE GREAT ALLIGATOR. At the ripe old age of 37, Bach retired from acting after she and Starr appeared in Paul McCartney's 1984 vanity project GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROAD STREET. In the early 1990s, she enrolled in UCLA to get a Master's in Psychology, and in the years since, the now 66-year-old Bach has been involved in humanitarian work for numerous charities, generally staying out of the public eye but almost always seen accompanying Starr at red carpet events. Most of FISHMEN's main cast returned in ALLIGATOR, including Bach, Cassinelli (whose tragic 1985 death on the set of another Martino film is discussed here), Johnson, and Bobby Rhodes, who appeared in FISHMEN as a servant and would later go on to cult movie glory for his roles in Lamberto Bava's DEMONS and DEMONS 2. ALLIGATOR also featured Mel Ferrer, who had no idea he'd inadvertently be part of the FISHMEN reunion in a roundabout way thanks to the SCREAMERS additions. Johnson and Cotten were both busy hamming it up in Eurotrash at the time, with Johnson also starring in Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE the same year as the Martino films. Cotten, who appears to have been granted the privilege of live-on-set sound, really dives into his mad scientist role with the utmost enthusiasm--he only has two or three scenes, but judging from his work here, you'd think he was as invested in this as he was CITIZEN KANE, SHADOW OF A DOUBT, and THE THIRD MAN decades earlier. That's a pro.
Mel Ferrer collecting an easy
$10,000 for his work on SCREAMERS
ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN was never officially seen in its original form in the US until Eurocult outfit Mya Communication released it on DVD in 2009. The Mya transfer is acceptable for the most part, with some very murky bits and various rough spots. Scorpion's SCREAMERS presentation essentially makes the FISHMEN DVD obsolete--not only is the quality better (except for one exterior scene with Bach offering some blue potion to the fishmen that's still quite murky, which must just be the way it was shot), but SCREAMERS, even with its patched-together nature, is the far more entertaining and fast-paced film. The Blu-ray also offers reversible artwork if you prefer the SOMETHING WAITS IN THE DARK poster design (both one-sheets can be spotted adorning the walls of the Civic TV offices in David Cronenberg's VIDEODROME). Corman knew how to make a movie play, and he obviously taught guys like Dante and Drake well, not to mention Wynorski, whose carnival barker act of an ad campaign upped the hyperbole factor past a point where even Corman was left bewildered. In the bonus features, Wynorski talks of getting the call from Corman on Saturday morning after he received word of the Friday night debacle of drive-in owners and audiences furiously voicing their outrage at not seeing a man turned inside out. "Jim, is there a man turned inside out in the picture?" the always soft-spoken Corman asked. "No, Roger. There isn't," Wynorski sheepishly replied, expecting to hear the words "You're fired." Instead, Corman told him to get down to the office so they could figure out what they were going to do to fix it. "You mean I'm not fired?" Wynorski asked. "No, Jim. You put people in seats. I'll never fire anyone for putting people in seats. But we need the inside out man." Roger Corman: a man who always knows what his audience wants.
Directed by Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino). Written by Elisabeth Parker, Jr., (Elisa Livia Briganti), Martin Dolman (Sergio Martino), Saul Saska (Dardano Sacchetti), John Crowther and Lewis E. Ciannelli. Cast: Daniel Greene, Janet Agren, John Saxon, Claudio Cassinelli, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Amy Werba, Darwyn Swalve, Robert Ben (Roberto Bisucci), Pat Monti, Donald O'Brien, Frank Walden, Franco Fantasia, Sergio Testori, Bruno Bilotta, Alex Vitale. (R, 93 mins)
Arguably the silver screen's ultimate arm-wrestling cyborg movie, Sergio Martino's HANDS OF STEEL is a desert-set Italian TERMINATOR ripoff with elements of BLADE RUNNER and the yet-to-be-released OVER THE TOP. It was released in Europe in early 1986 and was acquired for US distribution by '80s exploitation outfit Almi Pictures (INVASION OF THE FLESH HUNTERS, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY), by then running on fumes with HANDS OF STEEL its only 1986 theatrical release and also its penultimate one: Almi folded after 1987's Richard Ramirez-inspired slasher film THE NIGHT STALKER. Despite its severe budgetary limitations, troubled production, and spotty release by a company that was on life support, HANDS OF STEEL found an audience during the VHS glory days to become one of the more revered Italian exploitation films of the era, and one of its last highlights as the golden era of Eurotrash was beginning to wind down.
In the future of 1997, America is a polluted, destitute, overpopulated wasteland with dangerous acid rain zones. Blind politician Rev. Arthur Mosley (Franco Fantasia) has a plan to revitalize the country and turn its fortunes around, so of course, there's an attempt on his life by assassin Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene). Paco merely ruptures the Reverend's spleen and makes an escape through an underground "electrical conduit," with Inspector Banky (Frank Walden, who's terrible) and FBI psychologist Dr. Peckinpah (Amy Werba) in pursuit that could charitably be called "barely lukewarm." Paco makes his way to a middle-of-nowhere town on the outskirts of Page, AZ (actually Arcosanti, just outside of Page), the location of choice for numerous mid '80s Italian productions, where he takes a handyman job at a bar/truck-stop/no-tell-motel run by Linda (Janet Agren). For a while, Paco manages to keep his true nature a secret: he's 70% cyborg, reconstructed and programmed by a nefarious, big-money organization called the Turner Foundation, run by Francis Turner (John Saxon), a ruthless one-percenter who doesn't have time for Mosley's altruistic bullshit. The human Paco was "a veteran of the 1987 Guatemala Conflict," who was killed in an accident before being rebuilt by Prof. Olster (Donald O'Brien), who was employed by the Turner Foundation until he realized the extent of his boss' unscrupulousness. Paco was programmed by Turner hatchet man Cooper (Roberto Bisucci) but emotions still linger in the 30% of him that's still human (and Linda gets part of that 30%, if you catch my drift), which is why he couldn't bring himself to kill Mosley. Fearing his robo-experiment will get out of control, Turner has anyone with knowledge of Paco killed and hires "infallible European hit man" Peter Howell (Claudio Cassinelli) to track him down.
Meanwhile, back near Page, Paco makes a name for himself at Linda's place by dealing with asshole trucker Raoul (Luigi Montefiori/"George Eastman") and his posse of sub-literate rednecks, and taking the crown from local arm-wrestling champ Blanco (Darwyn Swalve), but earning his gratitude by saving him from a lethal snake. With Howell and another Turner flunky (Sergio Testori) unable to pin down the head-crushing Paco, an impatient Turner sends in a female cyborg in no way modeled on Daryl Hannah's Pris from BLADE RUNNER and then decides to take matters into his own hands, and if loving the idea of John Saxon hoisting an over-the-shoulder laser bazooka is wrong, then I don't want to be right.
HANDS OF STEEL is ludicrous and often unintentionally hilarious, from the cheap sets and special effects (Cooper starts destroying Olster's lab--which consists of randomly-placed aluminum dryer tubing--as Olster yells "Stop! You'll ruin everything!"; an FBI press conference updating Mosley's condition looks like it's taking place in a high-school classroom with about ten reporters in attendance; and yes, there's the obligatory scene with Paco tweaking his mechanized arm) to the stilted dialogue (Paco to Raoul: "You're a loser!"), but once you get past the clunky exposition and the action shifts to the desert town, it picks up quite a bit. As long as Martino (using his American-sounding "Martin Dolman" pseudonym) and his committee of screenwriters, including Italian genre vets Dardano Sacchetti (as "Saul Saska") and Elisa Livia Briganti (as "Elizabeth Parker, Jr") and an uncredited Ernesto Gastaldi, plus Lewis E. Ciannelli and American John Crowther (who also wrote such actioners as KILL AND KILL AGAIN, THE EVIL THAT MEN DO, and MISSING IN ACTION) stay focused on Paco and the yahoos at Linda's house of ill repute and Hallow's perpetually one-step-behind pursuit, HANDS OF STEEL is highly entertaining. The scenes with Werba and Walden (who, again, is a terrible actor) are filled with clumsy dialogue that explains the obvious ("It's possible that Turner developed a bionic killer to get to Mosley!") and only serves to slow down the action. Most of the interiors were probably shot in Rome, though Martino does make use of some Arcosanti locals in some scenes and most of the exteriors are definitely shot in the Colorado River area, with a climactic action sequence taking place on the Navajo Bridge over Marble Canyon, which marks the beginning of the Grand Canyon.
Claudio Cassinelli (1938-1985)
As fun as HANDS OF STEEL is, it's impossible to discuss without mentioning the dark cloud that still looms over the whole project: veteran Italian actor Cassinelli and a pilot were killed in a helicopter crash during production on July 12, 1985. Don Nasca, a local pilot hired by the producers, was flying the chopper as Cassinelli was being filmed firing out of the side at some actors on the Navajo Bridge. Nasca flew under the bridge, lost control of the helicopter, and crashed into the steel arch underneath. The chopper was destroyed on impact, killing both men instantly, with the pieces falling 470 feet into the Colorado River below. Nasca's body washed away and was never recovered and the current was so strong that it took rescue workers two days to find Cassinelli, whose body was still strapped to his seat. The actor was 46 years old, and left behind a wife and three children.
Martino and the cast decided to finish the movie, but it took some extensive rewriting to get Cassinelli's character out of the film. The Arizona scenes were shot first, with the Rome interiors to follow, and after Cassinelli was killed during the first half of production, Bisucci was hired to play Cooper, a new character whose consistent screw-ups result in his termination and the subsequent hiring of Cassinelli's Howell. Cooper and Hallow were originally supposed to be one character, Howell. Also, for most of the film, Saxon's Turner is seated at his desk barking "Find Paco Queruak!" into his phone and interacting with his co-stars as little as possible. But he eventually joins the pursuit of Paco and Linda when he grows frustrated with Howell's lack of progress. Turner shows up with some goons and one of them shoots "Cassinelli" and kills him (there's a cloud of smoke and you can't see his face), and all we see is Howell lying face down in the dirt. Obviously, this was shot after Cassinelli's death to give his character a hasty exit. Considering that the film seems to be building up to a Paco/Howell showdown, it seems odd--if you don't know the circumstances--why Turner would suddenly show up when he doesn't seem like the kind of guy who wants to get his hands dirty. It's entirely plausible that Saxon's guest appearance was expanded after Cassinelli's death, since Cassinelli was obviously intended to be part of the climax on the Navajo Bridge. Now there's a sequence with Linda escaping with Blanco intercut with close-ups of Saxon firing at them before he gets off the helicopter and has the laser bazooka showdown with Paco at the same abandoned Rome factory that's in nearly everyone of these Italian post-apocalypse dystopia movies, resulting in Turner learning one of life's harshest lessons as Paco informs him "You don't own a man until you control his heart."
Knowing that one of the stars was killed during filming, the seams are very apparent but HANDS OF STEEL makes a valiant effort to hide the stitching, even with the cumbersome way Cassinelli's character is taken out of the film. Cassinelli and Martino were long-time friends and colleagues--Martino directed him in several films, including 1975's THE SUSPICIOUS DEATH OF A MINOR, 1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD, 1979's ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN and THE GREAT ALLIGATOR, and 1982's THE SCORPION WITH TWO TAILS, and to the best of my knowledge, Martino hasn't discussed this tragedy in any interviews I've seen or read. Perhaps it's not a custom in Italian cinema the way it is in Hollywood movies, but considering their long working relationship and that he died making the film, the absence of a dedication to Cassinelli in the closing credits feels odd.
Agren, Eastman, O'Brien, and Fantasia are no strangers to Eurocult fanatics, plus Bruno Bilotta/"Karl Landgren" and STRIKE COMMANDO's immortal Alex Vitale can be seen as Mosley security guards. The voices of dubbing regulars Ted Rusoff, Ed Mannix, Susan Spafford, and Frank Von Kuegelgen can be heard, and Claudio Simonetti composes a catchy score that recycles at least one major cue from his soundtrack for Ruggero Deodato's CUT AND RUN (1985). This was the first in a string of Italian B-movies for American TV actor Greene, a GENERAL HOSPITAL vet who had appeared in T&A comedies like THE ROSEBUD BEACH HOTEL (1984), STITCHES (1985), and WEEKEND WARRIORS (1986) and was just coming off a two-year run on the CBS series FALCON CREST (oddly, a show in which Saxon was just beginning a two-year stint around this time). After HANDS OF STEEL, Greene would go on to star in four more Martino films: THE OPPONENT (1987), AMERICAN TIGER (1990), BEYOND KILIMANJARO (1990), and AFTER THE CONDOR (1991), as well as Enzo G. Castellari's HAMMERHEAD (1987) and Pierluigi Ciriaci's SOLDIER OF FORTUNE (1990), in addition to playing Elvira's love interest in 1988's ELVIRA: MISTRESS OF THE DARK. After his sojourn in Italy, Greene continued in TV and various bit parts but acts very sparingly these days, usually only in Farrelly Brothers comedies. The Farrellys--perhaps closet HANDS OF STEEL superfans?--have cast Greene in small parts in KINGPIN (1996), where he appeared as Woody Harrelson's dad, ME, MYSELF & IRENE (2000), SHALLOW HAL (2001), STUCK ON YOU (2003), FEVER PITCH (2005), and HALL PASS (2011). By no means an actor who had an Oscar in his future, Greene was beefy enough that he made a competent action hero, and even if tiny roles in Farrelly Brothers movies are what's keeping a roof over his head, he'll always be Paco Queruak for HANDS OF STEEL fans and disciples of classic '80s Italian Eurotrash ripoffs.
UPDATE: In February 2017, Code Red released a special edition Blu-ray of HANDS OF STEEL that features interviews with Greene, Saxon, Eastman, Martino, and Bisucci. Of the interviews, Saxon's is the least essential, basically a four-minute series of random recollections about working in the Italian film industry that have nothing specific to do with HANDS OF STEEL (Saxon on JOE KIDD co-star Clint Eastwood, who he's known since their 1950s Universal contract days: "Clint's done very well for himself"). Everyone else talks at length about the production, the location shooting, and Cassinelli's death, with Greene--a soft-spoken and immensely likable guy--describing witnessing the crash, calling it "one of the worst days of my life," and sharing fond recollections of working with Cassinelli and socializing with him off-set. Martino states "Ultimately, I'm responsible. Claudio was like a big kid and he wanted to fly in the helicopter so he could tell his son about it. He asked me if he could ride in it for the shot, and I should've told him no." Eastman's comments are a bit more extreme, calling the pilot an "asshole," a "hothead," and a "fanatic," painting him as an unstable Vietnam vet who was trying to show off, doing a U-turn inside the gorge, where a downdraft caused him to lose control and crash into the bridge. Eastman blames the entire production for Cassinelli's death, saying no one knew he was even on the helicopter except himself and an assistant director. When the crash happened, Eastman says he screamed "Claudio is inside!" and his entire account contradicts Greene's and Martino's recollections that Cassinelli was excited about the opportunity to ride in the helicopter.
