OPERATION NAM aka COBRA MISSION (Italy/West Germany - 1986; US release 1987) Directed by Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Written by Gianfranco Clerici, Vincenzo Mannino, Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis) and Erwin C. Dietrich. Cast: Oliver Tobias, Christopher Connelly, Manfred Lehman, John Steiner, Donald Pleasence, Ethan Wayne, Gordon Mitchell, Enzo G. Castellari, Enio Girolami, Alan Collins (Luciano Pigozzi), Aldo Massasso, David Light. (Unrated, 87 mins) "Forget about it, man. It's Vietnam." This Italian-German Namsploitation actioner was shot in 1985 as COBRA MISSION but unreleased in the US until 1987, when it went straight to video courtesy of Imperial Entertainment, who retitled it OPERATION NAM, as Vietnam movies were in vogue in months after PLATOON. In West Germany, COBRA MISSION was known as THE RETURN OF THE WILD GEESE in an effort to tie it in with Antonio Margheriti's WILD GEESE ripoff CODENAME: WILDGEESE (1984), as both films shared German co-producer Erwin C. Dietrich. An unusually downbeat and cynical example of the '80s P.O.W. rescue movie, COBRA MISSION/OPERATION NAM avoids the flag-waving, "Born in the USA," "America! Fuck yeah!" jingoism of the Reagan era, when blockbusters like RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II went back to Vietnam to refight the war with a guaranteed American victory. OPERATION NAM shares the distrust of the powers that be exemplified by Charles Napier's duplicitous Murdock in RAMBO, but it goes further by letting the corrupt US government and military win and having the good guys lose the war a second time. The heroes of OPERATION NAM aren't killing machines like Sylvester Stallone's John Rambo or Chuck Norris' James Braddock in the MISSING IN ACTION movies. They're normal, everyday guys like the Vietnam vets in Ted Kotcheff's UNCOMMON VALOR. OPERATION NAM has some valid points to make and its finale is an unexpectedly subversive gut-punch, but it's still a Namsploitation B-movie directed by Fabrizio De Angelis, under his usual pseudonym "Larry Ludman." Much better known as a producer (ZOMBIE, THE BEYOND, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) than a director--something he didn't start doing until 1983's FIRST BLOOD ripoff THUNDER WARRIOR-- De Angelis blows things up impressively, but the film is ragged and filled with amateurish continuity gaffes (like one character going back and forth from light stubble to a two-week beard, often in the same scene) and sloppy corner-cutting, often glossing over important details just to get to the next explosion.
Unable to adjust to civilian life in the decade-plus since they returned home from Vietnam, three Arizona men impulsively decide to mount a hastily-planned P.O.W. rescue mission: henpecked Roger (Christopher Connelly) plays video games all day and hates his wife, his daughter, and his life in general; drifter Mark (Manfred Lehman) just walked out on a shitty job at a desert bar; and unemployed James (John Steiner) has just pawned his service medals so he can afford a suit to wear to Roger's daughter's wedding. The vets share crass, vulgar war stories and offend the other guests--all rich friends of Roger's nagging wife--who drop unsubtle lines that scream "MESSAGE!" like one pompous asshole declaring "Those Marines are trained for combat, but they're only happy when they're fighting in war." The three men ditch the wedding and pay a visit to their old commander, Major Morris (cult director Enzo G. Castellari), who was railroaded out of the Marines for his persistence in pushing the issue of rescuing P.O.W.s still left behind in Vietnam, a topic that those high up the military chain of command, like stern Col. Mortimer (Gordon Mitchell), refuse to discuss or even acknowledge. The guys visit another vet buddy, Richard (top-billed Oliver Tobias of THE STUD), who's crashing in a mental institution for free meals and easy sex with the nurses, improbably break him out of the facility and head to Bangkok. "There's only one problem...how do I get outta here?" Richard asks, as De Angelis immediately cuts to the four men driving around Bangkok, never bothering to show how they managed to get Richard out of the hospital.
Taking $30,000 from a corrupt, Bangkok-based contractor (Enio Girolami) who cons grieving families of their hard-earned money by promising to find their MIA sons, the quartet head to Vietnam meet up with Father Lenoir (Donald Pleasence), a French priest who's been in the region since the 1950s and supplies them with weapons, ammo, and maps to still-operational P.O.W. camps. Typical Namsploitation antics ensue, with the guys mowing down numerous Viet Cong soldiers and eventually finding a camp with several Americans still being held captive. In a plot development that echoes RAMBO and the untrustworthy Murdock, Roger and the others find out that the US government and military are fully aware of the remaining P.O.W.s, and that they were left behind and labeled "war criminals" as part of the agreement to end the war. US inspectors visit the camps every year or so to check up on everyone, always promising that "We're gonna bring you home soon," and they never do, and Roger and the others who went on this unauthorized rescue mission find themselves in over their heads with a government that needs them to keep their mouths shut.
Perhaps because European producers didn't have an American flag to fly behind tough guy stars like Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Norris, and David Carradine (who's literally draped in an American flag at the end of the 1986 Cannon production P.O.W.: THE ESCAPE), bleak endings were nothing new with Italian Namsploitation movies. Two films by Antonio Margheriti--1980's THE LAST HUNTER and 1983's TORNADO--have bum-out final shots that send the audience out sulking. Even taking those into consideration, OPERATION NAM is a little more subversive than you might expect, going full PARALLAX VIEW in the home stretch and boasting one of the more ballsy downer endings you'll see in the Namsploitation genre, one that not only paints the government as not giving a shit about those who risk their lives fighting for their country, but actively silencing those who pose a risk of shattering the illusion of America. Until then, it's fairly typical of mid '80s Italian action, complete with some of the same Arizona locations seen in films like THUNDER WARRIOR and HANDS OF STEEL, location work in the Philippines filling in for Vietnam, questionable dubbing choices (Tobias, Lehman, and Steiner are all dubbed, with British Steiner given a ridiculously overripe Southern good ol' boy accent), a slumming guest star cameo (in this case, Pleasence, who's in the movie for five minutes, tops), and Connelly ad-libbing the same bizarre insults he used in almost all of his many Italian trash movies of the period (yes, his old standbys "flyface" and the ubiquitous "suckfish" make appearances here).
Ethan Wayne hanging with his dad on the
set of 1973's THE TRAIN ROBBERS
When Imperial Entertainment's VHS release of OPERATION NAM arrived in video stores, the pre-release promo and the cover art hyped the presence of Ethan Wayne. The sixth of John Wayne's seven children and named after his father's character in THE SEARCHERS, Ethan Wayne (who's also gone by "John Ethan Wayne") has a supporting role as one of the P.O.W.s and figures prominently in the depressing finale, but Imperial's tag line screamed "In the John Wayne action-packed tradition comes his son Ethan Wayne," plastered over a pic of Oliver Tobias blowing someone away. Born in 1962 to John Wayne and his third wife Pilar, Ethan Wayne started out with bit parts in some of his dad's late-period westerns like 1970's RIO LOBO and 1971's BIG JAKE, and eventually moved into stunt work. He made a brief detour to Italy in an attempt to start a career as an action star, but all he got were roles in two Fabrizio De Angelis films, starring in 1984's Arizona-shot THE MANHUNT, plus his supporting role in OPERATION NAM. Wayne got a few TV guest spots over the years and had a lengthy run on the daytime soap THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, but things never took off for him and he never even got as big as Patrick Wayne, let alone their old man. These days, Ethan is in charge of overseeing his father's estate and all of its business concerns, and he runs the John Wayne Cancer Foundation charity. Tobias, meanwhile, would reunite with De Angelis for 1990's insane THE LAST MATCH, without question the greatest football commando movie ever made, with Tobias as a superstar QB whose daughter is abducted in a South American country, prompting him to take his team--played by off-season members of the Miami Dolphins and the Buffalo Bills, including then-Bills QB Jim Kelly--on a rescue mission as they attack the villain's compound in full game-day attire, complete with their coach (Ernest Borgnine) calling coordinated plays ("Hut! Hut!") and their kicker punting footballs stuffed with grenades.
Under its original COBRA MISSION title, the film was enough of a success in Europe and Asia that De Angelis produced the 1988 sequel COBRA MISSION 2, directed by Camilo Teti (a production manager for Sergio Leone on ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST and DUCK, YOU SUCKER and for Dario Argento on THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE) under the pseudonym "Mark Davis," with the younger and more Stallone-esque Brett Clark (BACHELOR PARTY, EYE OF THE EAGLE, DELTA FORCE COMMANDO) as someone named Roger--though it doesn't seem as if he's playing the same Roger as Connelly, who died of cancer in 1988--who's off the grid and working black ops for the US government, sent to help freedom fighters depose a Latin American dictator. COBRA MISSION 2 can be found on the bootleg circuit, but was never released in the US and has fallen into total obscurity.
SPOILER ALERT
Note: the version of OPERATION NAM that's streaming on Amazon Prime, under the original title COBRA MISSION, has a bizarre edit in the final scene that eliminates crucial information and inadvertently gives the film an anticlimactic and confusing wrap-up that significantly cushions the blow. After the men leave Vietnam and head home, forced by the military to leave the P.O.W.s behind, Mortimer is shown arriving at a hospital and saluting an apparently shell-shocked, motionless, wheelchair-bound Richard. The Amazon version eliminates a POV shot of Moritmer walking down the hallway to Richard's room as captions reveal that Roger and James both died mysterious deaths immediately after their attempted rescue mission, the implications being that they were murdered and Richard has been given a ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST lobotomy and dumped back in the V.A. hospital to keep quiet about what he knows. This scene is actually shown in full in the COBRA MISSION trailer above, so it's odd that it's incomplete in the Amazon Prime version, which actually runs two minutes longer and has more violence and gore than Imperial Entertainment's 85-minute VHS release of OPERATION NAM.
TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR
(Italy/Spain - 1984; US release 1986)
After his amazing early '80s run of legendary Eurotrash classics like 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, THE NEW BARBARIANS, and ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX, Italian action auteur Enzo G. Castellari tried to channel his inner David Lean with TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR, which wants to be another LAWRENCE OF ARABIA but doesn't quite pull it off. The film was also a one-and-done venture into Italian action for Mark Harmon, the former college football star who already had an established TV career (ABC's 240-ROBERT, NBC's FLAMINGO ROAD) and was one season into a four-year stint on NBC's ST. ELSEWHERE, but was looking for big-screen stardom beyond supporting roles in COMES A HORSEMAN (1978) and BEYOND THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1979). He didn't find it with TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR, which didn't even get a US theatrical release and ended up going straight to network TV, premiering on CBS in 1986, presumably to capitalize on Harmon's Golden Globe-nominated turn as serial killer Ted Bundy in the controversial NBC miniseries THE DELIBERATE STRANGER that same year. Blue-eyed California native Harmon is hilariously miscast as Gacel Sayeh, a leader of the nomadic Tuareg tribe in the Sahara. Beholden to centuries of custom, Sayeh is outraged when a military captain (Antonio Sabato) and his underling Sgt. Malick (spaghetti western fixture Aldo Sambrell) kidnap his guest, political fugitive Abdul El Kabir (Luis Prendes), who's being hunted by the country's newly-instilled regime. Exiled Kabir showed up at the Tuareg camp in need of water, and the captain intends to turn him over to those currently in power. Bound by rules of the Tuareg, Sayeh must avenge the dishonoring of his guest, and turns into a North African Rambo, hunting down the flunkies of the new minister (Paul Costello), while trying to be peacefully reined in by the sympathetic Capt. Razman (Paolo Malco), TUAREG's de facto Col. Trautman, who's always accompanied by a grinning officer who bears an uncanny resemblance to Germs and Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear.
Shot on location in Israel, TUAREG: THE DESERT WARRIOR is unusually ambitious for Castellari, who seems to have a big budget here and was obviously trying for something more epic in scope than his usual genre fare. The legitimately unexpected twist at the end is further evidence that Castellari was attempting to make a statement about something, but the execution of the film is so muddled and the pace so slow that it's hard to conclude his exact intentions. TUAREG might've worked better with a Castellari stalwart like Franco Nero or Fabio Testi or even 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS' Mark Gregory headlining because it never overcomes the ill-advised casting of a perplexed-looking Harmon who, even though he dubs himself, sounds like he's reading off cue cards he's just now seeing for the first time. There's an undeniable curiosity value in seeing the future Sexiest Man Alive blowing shit up and guzzling camel blood in an obscure Italian actioner, but the film just doesn't work, and he's a big reason why. Harmon would eventually get some better-suited movie gigs after THE DELIBERATE STRANGER, with 1987's very enjoyable SUMMER SCHOOL and Peter Hyams' glossy 1988 thriller THE PRESIDIO, where he was paired with Sean Connery, fresh off of his UNTOUCHABLES Oscar win. Ultimately, Harmon was deemed an actor better suited for TV, always working but a bit of a late bloomer who finally found his niche in 2003 at the age of 52 with what will very likely go down as his signature role: no-nonsense investigator Leroy Jethro Gibbs on CBS' enormously popular and still-going-strong NCIS. Castellari would soon get back to his usual routine with 1985's bonkers, laser-beaming LIGHT BLAST. TUAREG also features Castellari stock company regulars Romano Puppo, Enio Girolami, Ottaviano Dell'Acqua, Massimo Vanni, and Giovanni Cianfriglia, along with a brief appearance by Ian "Kendal from PIECES" Sera as a reporter. (Unrated, 102 mins)
THE NEW BARBARIANS aka WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND (Italy - 1983; US release 1984) Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo Girolami (Enzo G. Castellari). Cast: Timothy Brent (Giancarlo Prete), Fred Williamson, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), Anna Kanakis, Thomas Moore (Enio Girolami), Venantino Venantini, Massimo Vanni, Giovanni Frezza, Iris Peynado, Andrea Coppola, Zora Kerova, Fulvio Mingozzi, Stefania Girolami, Paul Costello. (R, 91 mins)
Affectionately but often mistakenly considered by fans and historians to be part of the non-existent "BRONX WARRIORS trilogy," Enzo G. Castellari's THE NEW BARBARIANS is also the only actual ROAD WARRIOR-inspired post-nuke of the three films in question and has no relation to the other films aside from being directed by Castellari. It was shot between 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1982) and ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX (1983), but rather than post-apocalyptic, the two BRONX films were closer in setting and tone to Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS (1979) and John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK (1981), with their then-futuristic setting (the sequel ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX takes place ten years after the events of 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) perhaps misleading people into lumping it in with all the post-nukes being made at the time. THE NEW BARBARIANS was Castellari's only entry in the Italian post-nuke cycle, and while it features all the expected crazy cars and futuristic, rocket-launching dune buggies, post-nuke despots, nomadic heroes, and that same desert portraying the same scorched-earth wasteland, it also stands alone in its subgenre. Taking what others might use as a subtle subtext and bringing it to the forefront as a major plot point, THE NEW BARBARIANS is the CRUISING of Italian post-nuke ripoffs.
Set in 2019, several years after the nuclear holocaust, the world is a desert with scattered bands of survivors trying to rebuild and restart the human race. That doesn't work for One (Luigi Montefiori/George Eastman), the tyrannical leader of the Templars, the "high priests of death" and the "warriors of vengeance," a brutal, militarized squad of hilariously-coiffed psychos bent on making the living pay for the crime of being alive. It is One's goal that "the seed of man will be canceled forever from the face of the earth." It's telling that there's only men in the Templars, and that One's goal is zero population growth. Enter Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete, billed as "Timothy Brent" and looking like a post-apocalyptic Bert Convy), a nomadic warrior with a giant plastic bubble on top of his car. Scorpion tries to help a wandering group of survivors that includes Alma (Anna Kanakis of 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK), and gets help from two other post-nuke loner mercenaries, the tough-as-nails Nadir (Fred Williamson) and a fix-it-all kid mechanic (THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY's Giovanni Frezza) who also helps build a bullet-and-laser-proof body torso shield for Scorpion in his final battle against the Templars.
Action-wise, THE NEW BARBARIANS is pretty much business as usual: there's a ton of wrecked vehicles, car chases, explosions, smashed faces, heads are sliced and blown off, and there's no shortage of amusing dummy deaths and silly contraptions, like Scorpion's clear, illuminated, portable fuck-pad that comes in handy when he meets Alma. It looks like a portable, see-through bounce house, but Castellari intercutting the sex scene with Scorpion and Alma's prior discussion of their lives over a campfire is a less explicit homage to DON'T LOOK NOW and an interesting precursor to the similar and very praised George Clooney-Jennifer Lopez love scene in Steven Soderbergh's OUT OF SIGHT (1998). You get the feeling that there's some strong sexual undercurrent to THE NEW BARBARIANS with Castellari's abundance of weaponry protruding and extending from speeding vehicles like some kind of post-nuke Cialis commercial, but that's just a warm-up for what happens later. Where the film differentiates itself from overcrowded Italian post-nuke scene is its open depiction of the homosexual villains. One, clearly crushing on Scorpion, keeps trying to get him to join the Templars, but is only met with rejection. Their sexual preference--or at least the preference of One, who seems to rule his men by force and coercion--is not from innate desire for other men but to avoid the possibility of procreation and to have the world end. Late in the film, One gets so fed up with Scorpion that he has him strung up, and forcibly "initiates" him into the Templars via anal rape, a ceremony the rest of the Templars seem to know all too well. It's only after this humiliation and emasculation (along with some vaguely homophobic ballbusting from Nadir) that Scorpion rises like an avenging angel and decides to take out the Templars once and for all. It's here that THE NEW BARBARIANS vacillates between a post-apocalyptic spaghetti western with Scorpion, Nadir, and the kid mechanic forming the requisite unholy alliance, and a post-nuke DELIVERANCE as Nadir and the kid step aside and let Scorpion handle One on his own. Scorpion's final revenge on One is about as twistedly funny as this subgenre would ever get: a car chase with Scorpion barreling up on One, and an erect drill-like mechanism penetrating the back of One's ride and right through the lower part of the driver's seat, literally plowing through One's ass and ripping it apart.
ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX (Italy - 1983/US release 1985) Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Tito Carpi and Enzo G. Castellari. Cast: Mark Gregory, Henry Silva, Valeria D'Obici, Antonio Sabato, Paolo Malco, Timothy Brent (Giancarlo Prete), Thomas Moore (Enio Girolami), Massimo Vanni, Alessandro Prete, Romano Puppo, Eva Czenerys, Andrea Coppola, Moana Pozzi, Carla Brait, Thomas Felleghy, Martin Sorrentino, James Sampson, Paul Costello. (R, 90 mins)
THE NEW BARBARIANS opened in Italy in July 1983 and it would be picked up by a pre-NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET New Line Cinema, who rechristened it with the much snappier WARRIORS OF THE WASTELAND for its January 1984 release in US theaters. ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX was released in Italy in August 1983, just a month after THE NEW BARBARIANS, and like that film, New Line would also acquire it for the US, rolling it out in January 1985, minus some of the more excessive gore to secure an R rating. ESCAPE is an an enjoyable follow-up to BRONX WARRIORS, though it's not quite as good. Set in the year 2000, it involves a plot by an evil corporation overseen by Clark (Castellari's brother Enio Girolami, billed as "Thomas Moore") to gentrify the Bronx and relocate its denizens to lovely, scenic New Mexico. In truth, he's ordered armed "disinfesters" led by renegade cop Floyd Wangler (Henry Silva, in a slightly reworked version of Vic Morrow's Hammer the Exterminator from BRONX WARRIORS), to corral and exterminate the remaining residents. After his parents are killed, Trash (a returning Mark Gregory), who's now a nomadic warrior thanks to his entire gang being wiped out in the previous film, teams up with mercenary Strike (Giancarlo Prete), his dutiful son Strike Jr (Prete's son Alessandro), affable gang leader Dablone (Antonio Sabato), and crusading reporter Moon (Valeria D'Obici) to take on Clark, his ambitious second-in-command Hoffman (Paolo Malco), and mad dog Wangler, who spits coffee, berates everyone, and acts insane, because he's played by Henry Silva. Like its predecessor, ESCAPE isn't really a post-nuke outing, but everyone seems OK with letting them into the club. With less location shooting in the Bronx and more set work done at Cinecitta, ESCAPE is able to have a more dystopian feel than the urban war-zone immediacy of BRONX WARRIORS. Gregory was only 17 when BRONX WARRIORS was shot, and though it's just a year later, he looks a bit older and seems much more composed and comfortable compared to his awkward presence in the first film. ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX was featured on MST3K under the title ESCAPE 2000 (not to be confused with the Brian Trenchard-Smith film) and indeed has no shortage of amusing elements, from unconvincing miniatures to constant explosions to Silva's overacting to Trash's parents having a huge Mark Gregory-as-Trash poster adorning their living room wall.
The so-called "BRONX WARRIORS trilogy" has just been released in Blu-ray/DVD combo sets by Blue Underground (to their credit, they don't use the "trilogy" moniker) in impressive new transfers and bonus features. Castellari previously recorded commentaries for the Media Blasters/Shriek Show DVD editions of 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS and THE NEW BARBARIANS from a decade ago, but has recorded new tracks for these editions. There's a lot of repeat info, but Castellari, even with his heavily-accented English (his son and former production assistant Andrea Girolami, completely fluent and with barely an accent, is on hand to occasionally help him find the right words), is such a likable presence and entertaining raconteur and has enough new material that they're worth hearing. This marks ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX's first appearance on DVD or Blu-ray in the US, and it's the uncensored version with all of the New Line-trimmed violence intact. All three titles feature an "In Conversation" featurette with Castellari and producer Fabrizio De Angelis in 2015, discussing the films and reminiscing about the productions, with plenty of interesting anecdotes for fans.
1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (Italy - 1982; US release 1983)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Dardano Sacchetti, Elisa Livia Briganti, Enzo G. Castellari. Cast: Vic Morrow, Christopher Connelly, Fred Williamson, Mark Gregory, Stefania Girolami, Enio Girolami, George Eastman (Luigi Montefiori), John Sinclair, Betty Dessy, Rocco Lerro, Massimo Vanni, Angelo Ragusa, Enzo Girolami, Carla Brait. (R, 86 mins/92 mins)
Frequently and mistakenly lumped in with the onslaught of early 1980s Italian post-nuke ROAD WARRIOR ripoffs, Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS is more indebted to Walter Hill's THE WARRIORS, with a bit of John Carpenter's ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK. In it, we have warring gangs making their way across gang-controlled territories of NYC, but with a "near-future" element of the Bronx being a desolate No Man's Land, a look that wasn't hard to achieve given its state in 1982. Castellari, best known for his 1970s crime thrillers and 1978's THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS, captured the look of the decayed Bronx so effectively that the film, along with examples like WOLFEN and FORT APACHE THE BRONX from 1981, stands as a powerful visual document of its era. Of course, any semblance of seriousness offered by 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS ends there, especially considering that Castellari and the Italian crew couldn't get any of the streets in the Bronx shut down for their shoot, so in this uninhabitable "No Man's Land," you clearly see cars travelling in an orderly fashion (a crew member can be seen directing traffic in one shot) and area residents standing around, obviously watching some crazy Italians shoot a movie in their neighborhood. The Bronx was so dangerous that a local Hells Angels chapter hired by producer Fabrizio De Angelis to play additional members of the main biker gang pulled double duty as security for the cast and crew during the Bronx portion of the shoot (the interiors were shot in the much safer confines of the De Paolis Studios in Rome).
I absolutely love 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS. It's one of the essential trashy Italian exploitation films of its era. It's everything one looks for in such fare: blatant ripoff of one or more American box office hits, gratuitous violence, nonsensical and illogical story, often hilarious dubbing, slumming American actors, a killer score (by Walter Rizzati), and an eye for the grime of 1980s NYC that Hollywood films rarely captured, likely because the Italians were always shooting without permits and the city didn't step in first to clean it up and make it presentable for the cameras (a good example of this is seeing just how different the same stretch of Times Square porn palaces and sex shops look in Lucio Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER and Ron Howard's NIGHT SHIFT; both films shot the same year, but NIGHT SHIFT manages to make it look safe and clean while you actually fear for the well-being of RIPPER's cameraman, especially with passersby looking right at him). Low-budget American films like James Glickenhaus' THE EXTERMINATOR (1980), Romano Scavolini's NIGHTMARE (1981), and Abel Ferrara's FEAR CITY (1984) among others, were successful at this and there's an occasional TAXI DRIVER (1976) that didn't sugarcoat things, but if you want a really accurate look at 1970s and 1980s Times Square, Manhattan and the rundown areas of the surrounding boroughs in all their sleazy, decayed, and morally decrepit glory, no one captured this energy and imagery better than permitless Italian film crews.
In 1990, the Bronx is declared a no-man's-land (a crawl explains that all "attemps" at law and order have been abandoned) and is ruled by warring biker gangs who know to keep to their own turf. The main gang is The Riders, led by Trash (Mark Gregory). Complications ensue when rich teenager Anne (Stefania Girolami, Castellari's daughter), who can't stomach being the heiress to the powerful Manhattan Corporation, which handles 60% of the world's arms manufacturing, flees Manhattan and heads to the Bronx. She's immediately attacked by a gang of hockey stick-wielding idiots known as The Zombies, but is rescued by Trash and welcomed into The Riders. Meanwhile, Manhattan Corporation honcho Fisher (Enio Girolami, Castellari's brother) sends in renegade cop Hammer (Vic Morrow) to find Anne and bring her back home. Hammer has other plans: born in the Bronx and sporting a huge chip on his shoulder about it, the self-loathing Hammer detests his origins and wants the Bronx to burn, and instead of doing his job and rescuing Anne, decides to plant evidence that he hopes will start a war between The Riders and The Tigers, the other major gang led by The Ogre (Fred Williamson). Hammer assumes that Trash and his old-school bikers and Ogre and his pimped-out henchmen will destroy each other and the Bronx in the process. He even gets help from Ice (John Sinclair), Trash's duplicitous second-in-command who has his eyes set on leading The Riders and needs Trash out of the way, resenting the influence Anne has on him ("Since he's hooked up with that Manhattan pussy, all the blood's rushed to his cock"). Hammer, fueled by rage and hubris and assisted by untrustworthy trucker Hot Dog (Christopher Connelly), gets sloppy and it doesn't take long for the not-very-brightTrash to figure out that they're being played. He's forced to journey across dangerous territory and face other rival gangs (including one called The Scavengers, who inexplicably grunt and dress like prehistoric cavemen) to get to The Ogre and convince him to band together to take on the insane Hammer, who's bringing along an army of cops for the subtly-named "Operation Burnt Earth."
Hammer's curious hatred of his home turf is about as close to psychological drama as the script by Castellari, Dardano Sacchetti, and Elisa Livia Briganti gets. The primary focus is on action and, thanks to the work of the dubbing crew, hilarious dialogue. Whether it's the background chatter of The Riders ("Yeah! Ya gotta fight to live!") or the colorful metaphors (thinking they're being set up by Hammer, Trash doesn't simply say something like "This is a bunch of crap!" but instead goes with "It could be a pile of shit outta somebody's asshole!"), something bizarre is uttered in seemingly every scene. Even Connelly, dubbing himself, gets into the act, calling Ice "fagface" and Trash "pisshead" in odd insults that were improvised by the actor himself. In his later Italian B-movie excursions, Connelly used similar strange terms, including "suckfish" in at least three different movies. The silliness continues with a random riverside drum solo, and a complete disregard for NYC geography, with scenes in "the Bronx" obviously shot in Brooklyn (including one looking at the Brooklyn Bridge and the Twin Towers), and the exterior of The Ogre's "Bronx" headquarters actually being the abandoned insane asylum on Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Queens. But perhaps the film's biggest laugh comes from Sinclair badly wiping out on his bike in one shot and breaking several ribs...and Castellari leaving it in the movie.
Connelly and Williamson were no strangers to B-movies during this time and both would continue to work in the Italian exploitation scene, reuniting a few years later on 1987's Williamson-directed THE MESSENGER. Always employed but with his BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and COMBAT days long behind him, Morrow failed to get much of a career bump from co-starring as the rival coach in the 1976 blockbuster THE BAD NEWS BEARS, and was mainly doing TV guest spots and drive-in flicks like 1979's THE EVICTORS and 1980's HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP. He starred in the 1978 Japanese STAR WARS ripoff MESSAGE FROM SPACE and had already worked with Castellari on the Italian JAWS ripoff GREAT WHITE, released in the US in the spring of 1982 and quickly withdrawn from circulation. He co-starred with a then-unknown Michelle Pfeiffer on the short-lived 1980 ABC cop show B.A.D. CATS, but it was cancelled after six episodes. Estranged from his two daughters (including actress Jennifer Jason Leigh) from his first wife and in the midst of a divorce from his second, Morrow's professional and personal lives weren't at their pinnacle by the time he agreed to star in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, and on the BRONX WARRIORS DVD commentary, Castellari tells a story of Morrow breaking down on the flight to Rome after seeing the warm father-daughter affection between the director and daughter Stefania, saying he wished he had that kind of relationship with his daughters. According to Castellari, it was while Morrow was working on 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS that he learned he got a major role in the John Landis segment of the big-budget, Steven Spielberg-produced TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE, and that he was due to begin work on it when he was finished working on the Castellari film. Morrow's spirits picked up tremendously, and he told Castellari that he believed things were finally looking brighter for him and that he was going to try to repair the fractured relationship with his daughters.
Of course, everyone knows that Morrow never finished shooting TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE. He and two children were killed in the early morning hours of July 23, 1982 when, amidst explosions and pyrotechnics, a hovering helicopter crashed on top of them, crushing one of the children, with the blade decapitating the other child and 53-year-old Morrow. The actor had expressed concern over such a dangerous stunt while carrying two young children, but this was his most high-profile role in years and he wanted the scene to be perfect and didn't want to be seen as "difficult." Morrow was dead just three months after GREAT WHITE appeared in US theaters, and with the Italian practice of not shooting with live sound and instead dubbing the dialogue later on, Morrow didn't live long enough to voice his performance in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, so he was dubbed by veteran voice actor Ed Mannix, whose gruff tones can be heard in countless Italian exploitation films from that era. Cut by six minutes (eliminating a couple bits of gore, the Hells Angels onscreen credit, and the appearance of a campy gang of tap-dancers, all restored on the 2004 Media Blasters DVD), 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS was released in the US in April 1983 by United Film Distribution, nine months after Morrow's death, with TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE hitting theaters two months later, with Landis' segment with Morrow as a loudmouthed bigot who gets the tables turned on him included but slightly restructured and understandably feeling incomplete. The film was a modest box office hit and had its moments (most notably, John Lithgow's performance in George Miller's segment), but the resulting lawsuits and settlements dragged on for years as the tragic and completely avoidable deaths of Morrow and the children has, to this day, left a dark cloud hovering over the entire project.
1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS also introduced the world to the enigmatic and elusive Mark Gregory. Just 17 years old at the time of filming, young Marco di Gregorio was discovered working out at a Rome gym that Castellari frequented. Rechristened "Mark Gregory," the novice actor's screen presence is, in a word, awkward. His strange, halting posture and his pulled-too-high jeans are a sight to behold, and, well, there's no really delicate way to put this: he's got a chick's ass. This, and his apparent orientation (Williamson said in the DVD's accompanying interview, "Let's just say he didn't leave any footprints in the snow") weren't lost on the Hells Angels playing his fellow Riders, who, according to Castellari, openly razzed and insulted the actor, who didn't speak or understand much English. Gregory seems to be phonetically mouthing English, and was dubbed by the very Noo Yawk-sounding Steven Luotto. Gregory would eventually bulk up a bit more and gain some more confidence in his screen presence, never again looking quite as silly as he does here. Following 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS, Gregory reprised his role as Trash in Castellari's inferior sequel ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX. Shot in 1983 and released in the US by New Line Cinema in 1985, ESCAPE is unremarkable except for Henry Silva's over-the-top, coffee-spitting performance as a psycho sent in by the Manhattan Corporation to once again exterminate Trash and the denizens of the Bronx. ESCAPE FROM THE BRONX was skewered on MST3K under its alternate title ESCAPE 2000, which is not be confused with Brian Trenchard-Smith's ESCAPE 2000, aka TURKEY SHOOT.
Gregory also starred in the FIRST BLOOD knockoff THUNDER WARRIOR and its two sequels, and he appeared in several other Italian exploitation outings, such as 1983's ADAM AND EVE VS. CANNIBALS, aka BLUE PARADISE and 1987's DELTA FORCE COMMANDO (playing the villain opposite Williamson), and left the movie industry after 1989's AFGANISTAN: THE LAST WAR BUS, aka WAR BUS COMMANDO. For years, rumors circulated that he was serving time in prison on a murder charge or that he was working in a Rome pizza joint, and even Castellari and his son appeared in a video on YouTube asking for information from anyone that knew Gregory's whereabouts. A BRONX WARRIORS "Hunt for Trash" fan site found someone who claimed he knew a guy claiming to be Gregory, but the photos were unconvincing, to say the least, and the guy seemed entirely too young to be Gregory. I even briefly--well, for a day or so--teamed with none other than Stefania Girolami herself to investigate a "Marco di Gregorio" on Facebook who looked very similar to Gregory. She contacted him and he said he wasn't the guy, but even Girolami said the resemblance was pretty strong. It's interesting to think that in this day and age, with fan conventions and all the technology and the social media and all the ways to internet-stalk someone, the obviously off-the-grid Mark Gregory has successfully transformed himself into the J.D. Salinger of Eurotrash cinema.
Where are you, Mark Gregory? You have a huge fan base. Tell us your story!
YouTube montage created by a Mark Gregory superfan
In the wake of the huge global success of Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS (1964), FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE (1965), and THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (1966) came hundreds upon hundreds of spaghetti westerns that were cranked out at an astonishing rate well into the 1970s. By the early 1970s, with the coming of nihilistic American westerns like Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH (1969), the genre segued into political westerns such as Damiano Damiani's A BULLET FOR THE GENERAL (1968), Sergio Corbucci's COMPANEROS (1968), and Leone's DUCK, YOU SUCKER (1971) before making a sharp turn towards the comedic with the success of THEY CALL ME TRINITY (1970). TRINITY made a star of Terence Hill, who had been working as a character actor for years under his real name Mario Girotti. Starting with 1967's GOD FORGIVES, I DON'T, Hill often teamed with burly Bud Spencer (real name Carlo Pedersoli) on a series of spaghetti westerns that ranged from lighthearted to outright slapstick. While American westerns got increasingly violent in response to the first wave of spaghetti westerns, this new wave, in which most characters seemed modeled after Eli Wallach's Tuco in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Wallach even played a Tuco-like character in the 1969 Hill/Spencer western ACE HIGH), was more concerned with the lighter side of the genre. The success of THEY CALL ME TRINITY led to a sequel (1971's TRINITY IS STILL MY NAME!) and tons of offshoots and unofficial sequels (even an earlier Hill film was retitled REVENGE OF TRINITY). Spaghetti western experts like Howard Hughes, author of the genre analysis Once Upon a Time in the Italian West, frequently cite 1973's MY NAME IS NOBODY as, for all practical purposes, the end of the genre. A TRINITY-inspired western-comedy produced by Leone (who also directed parts of it, though Tonino Valerii is given sole credit) and therefore bringing the genre full circle, NOBODY paired Hill with Hollywood legend Henry Fonda for the story of a goofball gunslinger goading an aging cowboy into going out in a blaze of glory by taking on a 150-man posse singlehandedly. While the film's 1974 US release flopped (it was sold as a BLAZING SADDLES knockoff), MY NAME IS NOBODY was a huge hit in Europe, and led to a Leone-produced semi-sequel A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS AND A DUPE (1975), which was also released as NOBODY'S THE GREATEST. A few more slapstick spaghettis were produced and the genre quietly passed on as other trends, like polizias and EXORCIST ripoffs, took over.
Most audiences moved on as the spaghetti western faded into the sunset, which explains why three noteworthy (and too late for their own good) examples managed to fall through the cracks, though there were others that certainly justified the end of the genre, like Gianfranco Parolini's dreadful GOD'S GUN (1976), possibly the worst spaghetti western ever made. Lucio Fulci's FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (1975), Enzo G. Castellari's KEOMA (1976), and Sergio Martino's MANNAJA (1977) were about as far removed from the TRINITY school of spaghetti westerns as one could get, yet none of the three really fit in with the first or second wave of spaghettis, either. They're the kinds of bizarre, offbeat films that get made when no one's paying attention, from directors not normally associated with the genre.
FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE (Italy - 1975)
Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Ennio De Concini. Cast: Fabio Testi, Tomas Milian, Lynne Frederick, Michael J. Pollard, Harry Baird, Donald O'Brien, Adolfo Lastretti, Bruno Corazzari, Lorenzo Robledo. (Unrated, 104 mins)
FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE was directed by Lucio Fulci, then a jobbing journeyman just a few years away from cementing his place in cult movie history with 1979's ZOMBIE. Gambler and card cheat Stubby Preston (Fabio Testi) arrives in Salt Flat for his latest con game and is quickly kicked out of town by the sheriff (Donald O'Brien), along with three other miscreants: pregnant prostitute Bunny (Lynne Frederick), town drunk Clem (Michael J. Pollard), and the crazed Butt (Harry Baird), who claims to see dead people. Taking a coach and heading to Stubby's next stop of Sand City, the quartet are joined by depraved outlaw Chaco (Tomas Milian), who drugs them and rapes Bunny before shooting Clem in the leg and riding off. Vowing revenge on Chaco, Stubby pulls this odd "family" together as romance blooms between with Bunny and he decides to change his dishonest ways. There's very little in the way of action in this low-key, character-driven film, with most of the graphic bloodletting confined to the opening and closing sequences. With its odd characters and set pieces, its soft rock soundtrack, and its general eccentric quirkiness, it almost feels like Robert Altman, Arthur Penn, or George Roy Hill took a break from Hollywood and decided to go to Italy to make a spaghetti western just for the hell of it (it's probably not a coincidence that BONNIE AND CLYDE Oscar-nominee Pollard is in the cast). It's a film with surprising heart and shocking transgression, and the latter shouldn't be surprising given that it's a Lucio Fulci film. The bond that forms between the four outcasts feels genuine, and Fulci films rarely get more sensitively heartfelt than the moment when a dreary, depressed town filled with hard-bitten old bastards beaten down by life finds joy and hope in the cries of Bunny's newborn baby. It's moments like this that contrast sharply with Chaco's violation of Bunny, his horrific torture of a sheriff (perpetual victim Lorenzo Robledo, the Sean Bean of spaghetti westerns) and Butt's final meltdown after Clem dies, when Stubby finds out that the delicious meal Butt prepared for them is...Clem.
The four leads work very well together, though I wish Pollard's Clem had more to do and Butt's disappearance is abrupt and clumsily-handled (and may be due to British actor Baird's health issues; he was suffering from glaucoma and went blind around the mid-1970s--he died in 2005 but FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE was his last film and the character's vanishing act looks like a textbook example of an actor suddenly being unavailable). Milian doesn't have a lot of screen time but is a truly repulsive bad guy (and it's one of the rare instances where he's dubbing himself in an Italian film). The effectively American-sounding score was composed by Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera, with songs performed by European duo Greenfield & Cook with the Benjamin Franklin Group. FOUR OF THE APOCALYPSE is a strange film that refuses labels. The brief, horrific foray into cannibalism and the emotional third act exemplify the kind of wild unpredictability that makes the film such a one-of-a-kind entry in both the spaghetti western genre and Fulci's filmography.
KEOMA (Italy - 1976)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Mino Roli, Nico Ducci, Luigi Montefiori, Enzo G. Castellari. Cast: Franco Nero, Woody Strode, William Berger, Olga Karlatos, Orso Maria Guerrini, Antonio Marsina, Gabriella Giaccobe, John Loffredo (Joshua Sinclair), Donald O'Brien, Leon Lenoir, Wolfango Soldati, Victoria Zinny, Massimo Vanni, Giovanni Cianfriglia. (Unrated, 101 mins)
Like many Italian genre directors, Enzo G. Castellari dabbled in a little of everything until he found his niche, first with Franco Nero-headlined crime thrillers like HIGH CRIME (1973) and STREET LAW (1974), and later with the Italian WARRIORS ripoff 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS (1983) and the post-nuke THE NEW BARBARIANS (1983). He made everything from macaroni combat adventures like EAGLES OVER LONDON (1970) and THE INGLORIOUS BASTARDS (1978) to gialli like COLD EYES OF FEAR (1971), and had a few first-wave spaghetti westerns under his belt, like ANY GUN CAN PLAY (1967) and KILL THEM ALL AND COME BACK ALONE (1970). He also directed the dismal TRINITY ripoff CRY ONION (1976), one of the worst spaghetti westerns ever made despite a fascinating cast that included Nero, Sterling Hayden, Martin Balsam, legendary Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, and a farting horse. Perhaps to wash away the foul taste of CRY ONION, Castellari and Nero immediately reteamed for the more serious spaghetti throwback KEOMA.
KEOMA finds the Castellari-Nero alliance in fine form with Nero as the half-breed Keoma, who returns to his home after the Civil War to find the area a plague-infested wasteland ruled by the evil Caldwell (Donald O'Brien), a Confederate officer who took over the town and whose shady business dealings resulted in a polluted well that's killed off much of the population. Keoma immediately gets on Caldwell's bad side when he kills a couple of his flunkies who were terrorizing pregnant widow Lisa (Olga Karlatos). Things get even more complicated when Keoma must deal with his loathsome half-brothers (Orso Maria Guerrini, Antonio Marsina, and Joshua Sinclair), who never accepted Keoma as their father's (William Berger) son and now very inconveniently work for Caldwell.
"Lemme hear ya say KEOMA!"
Even though it arrived three years after the effective end of the spaghetti western, KEOMA was well-received by European fans eager to see Nero back in DJANGO mode after ten years. As far as I can tell, KEOMA never got a US theatrical release, which seems odd considering that even CRY ONION made it to a few US theaters in 1980. There's definitely a post-WILD BUNCH Peckinpah feel to the directorial style Castellari uses here, not so much in the violence (which is plentiful but not particularly bloody), but in the frequent use of slo-mo in the action scenes. Also notable is the imaginatively-staged finale with Keoma taking on his brothers while Lisa gives birth--as the mayhem ensues, we don't hear the gunfire but rather, the pained screams of Lisa and nothing else as Keoma's brothers are murdered. It's an initially disorienting effect that's ultimately a very creative use of sound and editing by Castellari and his regular editor Gianfranco Amicucci. There's also some crucifixion/resurrection symbolism and a witch (Gabriella Giaccobe), who may not be real and could represent Keoma's conscience. Nero, dubbing himself, is at the top of his game here, and KEOMA also benefits from the unusual casting of career badass Woody Strode as the disgraced and bullied town drunk who was once an idol to a young Keoma and sees the battle against Caldwell as his one shot at redemption. If there's one thing that's prevented KEOMA from becoming a legit spaghetti western classic and made it a target of ridicule, it's the absolutely terrible score by the usually-reliable Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, filled with badly-croaked songs that function as a Greek chorus warbled by singers for whom English is a second language. Sure, most of these films have goofy scores and silly songs, but the tunes in KEOMA are exceptionally godawful. Aside from that, KEOMA is top-notch.
MANNAJA aka A MAN CALLED BLADE (Italy - 1977)
Directed by Sergio Martino. Written by Sauro Scavolini, Sergio Martino. Cast: Maurizio Merli, John Steiner, Philippe Leroy, Martine Brochard, Sonya Jeannine, Donald O'Brien, Salvatore Puntillo, Rick Battaglia, Nino Casale, Enzo Fiermonte, Nello Pazzafini. (Unrated, 96 mins)
Maurizio Merli began his career in Italian genre fare as a second-string Franco Nero but briefly became a superstar in the mid-1970s with a string of extremely violent police thrillers like Umberto Lenzi's incredible ROME ARMED TO THE TEETH aka THE TOUGH ONES (1976). Usually playing a hard-nosed cop with anger management issues and a tendency to play by his own rules, Merli's Harry Callahan-like characters (he played different cops with names like Tanzi, Berni, and Betti, but they were all basically "Maurizio Merli") made him a sort-of Italian Clint Eastwood, but as the polizia films went out of style by the early 1980s, so did Merli. He drifted into Italian TV gigs and had a supporting role in the 1981 British drama PRIEST OF LOVE with Ian McKellen, but he never broke into American movies and never got to have his big Tarantino comeback: Merli was only 49 when he died in 1989 from a sudden, massive heart attack while playing tennis.
Merli's day in the sun was relatively brief, but he's become a beloved cult figure with fans of 1970s Italian cop thrillers. It's possible that the only reason MANNAJA got made was because Merli wanted to make a western and became a star after the genre faded away. MANNAJA was pretty much last call for the spaghetti western cycle. It's the last noteworthy one (though Fulci managed to sneak in SILVER SADDLE in 1978), and by this time, even the comedic TRINITY knockoffs had ceased being made and Italian genre fare was moving in a different direction, namely ripoffs of blockbuster American movies. MANNAJA was directed by Sergio Martino (1973's TORSO), who had one spaghetti western to his credit (1970's ARIZONA COLT RETURNS), but was known mainly for his early 1970s giallo collaborations with the stunning Edwige Fenech. Martino, like Fulci and Castellari, pinballed around the Italian B-movie scene for years but found his niche relatively early, and when gialli became passe, he tried his hand a bit of everything: cop thrillers (1975's SUSPECTED DEATH OF A MINOR), sex comedies (1976's SEX WITH A SMILE), cannibal horror (1978's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD), and post-nuke (1983's 2019: AFTER THE FALL OF NEW YORK), and almost everything in between. MANNAJA is stylistically interesting for its excessively foggy look, and Martino shoots some scenes as if he were making a horror movie (also helping this is a recurrent pulsating electronic music cue that sounds like it belongs in a zombie flick). It's a pretty standard western overall, but there are interesting touches throughout that make it a unique entry in the field.
Blade!
Blade (Merli) is a tomahawk-hurling, fur-coat-wearing bounty hunter who arrives in Suttonville to claim the reward for the wanted Burt Craven (Donald O'Brien, a fixture in these last spaghettis). Blade lets Craven go when he finds out that Suttonville has no marshal and the only law is McGowan (Philippe Leroy), a puritanical, religious fanatic mining magnate who rules the town and whose irresponsible business practices have created a smoggy, foggy pollution and a sick but practically enslaved work force (a "job creator," if you will). Blade irritates McGowan's top strongarm Voller (an expectedly hammy John Steiner) by jockeying for his job, but Blade has an ulterior motive: McGowan ran Blade's father off their land in the process of building his empire, and inadvertantly caused Blade Sr's death. Sick of taking orders from McGowan, Voller kidnaps his boss' daughter Deborah (Sonya Jeannine), setting off a chain of events that will, of course, lead to Maurizio Merli kicking all sorts of ass.
John Steiner as Voller
Merli tones down his rageaholic act a tad for MANNAJA, but he's still a solid hero and it's a shame his career didn't last longer. Martino achieves a nicely foreboding look to the film with all the fog and mud, and the way Blade emerges from the fog for his showdown with Voller is a great shot. Other than that, there's not much about MANNAJA that's very innovative, but it's an enjoyable actioner and a worthy eulogy for the genre, even if it gives us another batch of ill-advised Greek chorus songs from Guido & Maurizio De Angelis illustrating obvious plot points, this time with the croaking singer from the KEOMA soundtrack trading verses with a guy who's trying way too hard to sound like David Bowie.
This review was originally published in a slightly different form in June 2011 on the Mobius Home Video Forum.
GREAT WHITE
(Italy - 1982) Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Mark Princi. Cast: James Franciscus, Vic Morrow, Micky Pignatelli, Joshua Sinclair, Timothy Brent (Giancarlo Prete), Stefania Girolami, Thomas Moore (Ennio Girolami), Romano Puppo. 87 mins. PG
Shot in 1980 as L'ULTIMO SQUALO (THE LAST SHARK), this is the infamous Italian JAWS ripoff from Enzo G. Castellari that was released in the US by Film Ventures as GREAT WHITE in the spring of 1982 only to be yanked from theaters after two weeks (not after the opening weekend, which has been commonly cited) when Universal sued. It hasn't been shown in any capacity in the US since, and a planned screening at the New Beverly in Hollywood for a Castellari retrospective a couple years back was shut down by a still-irate Universal. It is a pretty shameless ripoff, but there's really no reason for Universal's legal department to still be acting like dicks about it.
Filmed mostly off the coast of Malta with some location work in Savannah, GA, GREAT WHITE has a small resort town being terrorized by a great white shark. Sound familiar? The sneering mayor (Joshua Sinclair), with his eye on becoming governor, plans to go ahead with his regatta despite the obvious danger. Meanwhile, famous hometown author and shark enthusiast Peter Benton (James Franciscus as both Roy Scheider and Richard Dreyfuss) shows the townies a slide show of shark information, as if they and the moviegoers live in a world where JAWS doesn't exist. Soon, after some more killings and a hilariously botched attempt by the mayor to reel in the shark by dangling a slab of meat from a helicopter, Benton and crusty old sea salt Ron Hamer (Vic Morrow as Robert Shaw) hunt down the shark after it bites off the leg of Benton's daughter Jenny (Castellari's daughter, Stefania Girolami).
This is a terrible but undeniably entertaining film. The completely immobile, stationary shark always pops out of the water with his mouth open, roaring (!!!), and just kinda bobbing in place. For scenes requiring movement, Castellari cuts to completely mismatched, grainy stock footage of smaller sharks that look nothing like a great white. There's some use of miniatures and toy helicopters that would have Antonio Margheriti looking the other way in embarrassment. But Film Ventures and Edward L. Montoro bet the farm on this, spending a few million on publicity and giving it a national release. My dad and I actually saw this opening weekend, and we, and the rest of the audience, weren't pleased. Not long after this, Film Ventures, a successful drive-in and B-movie outfit going back to the early 1970s, went broke and Montoro vanished, never to be seen again. As far as the actors go, Morrow chews the scenery with gusto, using an unconvincing Scottish accent (!), while Franciscus actually seems to take this seriously, but then he always had a Richard Crenna-esque way of bolstering even the most dubious material. If you get a chance (meaning, bootleg DVD), any self-respecting bad movie fan needs to treat themselves to this one. In one scene near the end, you can actually see the ropes being used to pull the immobile shark in a certain direction.
And can anyone tell me how Yvonne Wilkins' "Hollywood Big Time," the scorching tune played over GREAT WHITE's opening credits, failed to top the charts? Livin' on cocaine! Drivin' you insane!
