PAGANINI HORROR (Italy - 1989) Directed by Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi). Written by Luigi Cozzi and Daria Nicolodi. Cast: Daria Nicolodi, Jasmine Main (Jasmine Maimone), Pascal Persiano, Donald Pleasence, Maria Cristina Mastrangeli, Michele Klippstein, Pietro Genuardi, Luana Ravagnini, Roberto Giannini, Giada Cozzi, Elena Pompei, Perla Agostini. (Unrated, 83 mins) In the tradition of SHOCKING DARK, ROBOWAR, NIGHT KILLER, and KILLER CROCODILE, films that only seemed to exist in the pages of the Midnight Video bootleg VHS catalog back in the day, Severin unveils another never-released-in-the-US, late-period Italian horror obscurity in an impressive Blu-ray presentation, because physical media is dead. This time, it's Luigi Cozzi's ludicrous PAGANINI HORROR, a film that serves as a virtual case study for why--with the exception of Dario Argento and his protege Michele Soavi--Italian horror was on life support by 1989. Using his trusty pseudonym "Lewis Coates" as if we couldn't tell an Italian genre flick when we saw one, Cozzi, best known for the 1979 STAR WARS ripoff STARCRASH, the gut-busting 1980 ALIEN knockoff CONTAMINATION, and Cannon's 1983 CONAN-inspired HERCULES with Lou Ferrigno, had been planning a departure project in the form of a biopic of legendary Italian violinist Niccolo Paganini as far back as 1984, with the intention of nabbing GREYSTOKE star Christopher Lambert for the lead. As explained by Cozzi in the Blu-ray's bonus features, the serious Paganini film fell apart in pre-production, prompting the director to abandon his artistic ambitions and return to his genre comfort zone, reconvening with Ferrigno for the 1985 sequel THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES.
Cozzi was then one of five (!) directors cycled through 1988's extremely-troubled, never-released-in-the-US NOSFERATU IN VENICE (six if you count volatile star Klaus Kinski, who also logged time behind the camera), an unofficial sequel to Werner Herzog's 1979 film NOSFERATU, THE VAMPYRE, with only producer Augusto Caminito receiving directing credit. The subject of Paganini came up again for Cozzi a year later when Kinski wrote, directed, and starred in the humbly-titled KINSKI PAGANINI, a self-indulgent vanity project that consisted of little else but Kinski's Paganini bedding a series of beautiful women. Kinski wanted Herzog to direct it, but the legendary German auteur refused, calling the actor's script "unfilmable." The story essentially used Paganini's sexual exploits as more Kinski braggadocio, as the mercurial actor had just taken a deep dive into the locker room with his notorious and probably very embellished X-rated, fuck-and-tell memoir All I Need is Love. An 81-minute Klaus Kinski home movie, the disastrous KINSKI PAGANINI was met with derisive scorn and was apparently only released in Germany. Yet there was a feeling during its production that it would ignite a Paganiniassaince of sorts, as Cozzi quickly began work on the intended cash-in PAGANINI HORROR, which was built around the enduring myth that Paganini acquired his virtuoso skills and violin mastery via a deal with the devil.
Written by Cozzi and co-star Daria Nicolodi, who had recently split with Dario Argento after a long relationship (she's Asia Argento's mother) and many collaborations (DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA, INFERNO, TENEBRE, PHENOMENA, OPERA), PAGANINI HORROR opens with a Venice-set prologue where a young violin prodigy (Cozzi's daughter Giada) electrocutes her bathing mother (Elena Pompei) by tossing a hair dryer into the tub. Cut to a recording studio, where pop star Kate (Kate McKinnon lookalike Jasmine Maimone) and her band--guitarist Elena (Michele Klippstein), bassist Rita (Luana Ravegnini), and drummer Daniel (Pascal Persiano)--are busy working on their latest single "Stay the Night," which sounds suspiciously like Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name." Bitchy producer Lavinia (Maria Cristina Mastrangeli) isn't feeling it and refuses to sugarcoat it, telling Kate and the band "There's nothing original about it!" (she's not wrong) and exhorting them to get their shit together. This prompts Daniel to arrange a clandestine meeting where he makes a pact with the mysterious Mr. Pickett (Donald Pleasence, in an ill-fitting trenchcoat and dubbed by someone trying to sound like HELLRAISER's Pinhead) where he's granted a sealed parchment that contains a long-buried, never-heard-or-performed Paganini piece called "Paganini Horror." Daniel helps Kate arrange the piece into the rocker "The Winds of Time," which sounds more than a little similar to Electric Light Orchestra's "Twilight." The band is rejuvenated, and Lavinia hires famed horror movie director Mark Singer (Pietro Genuardi) to film a music video for the song ("No one has ever done anything remotely like this before, except for Michael Jackson and his fantastic 'Thriller' video clip!" exclaims Kate in a way that no rational adult human ever would) at a creepy, long-abandoned villa owned by Sylvia (Nicolodi), supposedly the very location of Paganini's deal with the devil. They get more than they bargained for when playing their new song resurrects the masked specter of Paganini, who roams the premises like a Dipshit Phantom of the Opera, offing everyone one by one in a variety of gruesome ways, usually with a violin that has a retractable blade at the chin rest.
You almost have to begrudgingly admire the shameless chutzpah of the PAGANINI HORROR songs composed by Vince Tempera, formerly of Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera (THE PSYCHIC). Additionally, there's a certain garish style that makes it an interesting companion piece to Cozzi's next film, THE BLACK CAT, which was shot immediately after PAGANINI HORROR, shares co-star Maimone, and also involves evil goings-on in the entertainment industry. Shot as DE PROFUNDIS but retitled to cash in on the ill-fated Poesploitation craze of 1989-91, THE BLACK CAT was written by Cozzi and Nicolodi and intended to be an unofficial final entry in Dario Argento's "Three Mothers" trilogy (following SUSPIRIA and INFERNO), but Nicolodi left the project over the usual "artistic differences" and took her name off the finished film (Argento would eventually complete the trilogy in an official capacity with 2007's MOTHER OF TEARS, which really isn't any better or worse than Cozzi's fake Three Mothers opus). With PAGANINI HORROR, Cozzi takes some of the cosmic bullshit he would use in THE BLACK CAT for a third-act, deus ex machina test spin, with Nicolodi's Sylvia babbling about "the harmony of the spheres," and "enormous radio telescopes," and "the stars making music," and other assorted batshittery that sounds more at home in a Marianne Williamson campaign speech. It makes as much sense as anything else in PAGANINI HORROR, whether it's Cozzi's recurring shout-outs to Argento (Lavinia crawling through a blue-lit, PHENOMENA-inspired tunnel or someone else finding a room with an illuminated hourglass that bathes the whole thing in a SUSPIRIA red glow), the endless, time-killing shots of people walking around, Elena being found covered in a strange mold that Lavinia recognizes as the same kind of unique fungus used in violin construction in the 18th century, and Pleasence standing on top of St. Mark's Campanile in Venice, throwing wads of US cash out of a bag and yelling "Fly away, little demons!" Obviously enticed by a free trip to Venice, Pleasence only has a few scenes and was paid $20,000 for three days' work on the film (was that his own money in the bag?), and at least one of those days had to be devoted to the extended gondola ride his character enjoys, if the actor's goofy grin is any indication.
Produced by Fabrizio De Angelis, who shepherded the work of Lucio Fulci during most of his incredible 1979-1982 run of greatness, PAGANINI HORROR quickly vanished from Italian theaters in the summer of 1989, and didn't get much of a release anywhere else in the world aside from Japan. It never even made it to US home video until Severin's recent Blu-ray release, which gives it an edge over THE BLACK CAT, which also skipped US theaters and VHS before debuting on the old-school Sci-Fi Channel in 1993. THE BLACK CAT has been available on streaming services and frequently runs on Comet, but remains MIA on North American DVD and Blu-ray. Both of these endearingly terrible films are flip sides of the same coin (at least THE BLACK CAT gets some real jams, relying heavily on Bang Tango's barnburner "Someone Like You") and represented the last narrative work of Cozzi's career until his little-seen 2016 mockumentary BLOOD ON MELIES' MOON. For the nearly 30 years in between, the now-72-year-old Cozzi directed a couple of documentaries about Dario Argento, has stayed busy managing the Italian horror memorabilia store and museum Profondo Rosso in Rome, and regularly appears at fan conventions.
KILLER CROCODILE (Italy - 1989) Directed by Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Written by David Parker Jr. (Dardano Sacchetti) and Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Cast: Anthony Crenna, Ann Douglas, Thomas Moore (Ennio Girolami), Van Johnson, Wohrman Williams (Bill Wohrman), Sherrie Rose, Julian Hampton (Pietro Genuardi), John Harper, Gray Jordan, Marte Amilcar. (Unrated, 92 mins) A very late-to-the-party "Nature Run Amok" Italian JAWS ripoff shot in the Dominican Republic, 1989's KILLER CROCODILE was never too hard to find even back in the VHS bootleg heyday prior to the circa-2000 Eurocult explosion on DVD. But for whatever reason, it's never been officially released in the US until now, courtesy of Severin's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead). Directed and co-written by veteran producer (THE BEYOND, THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS)-turned-exploitation knockoff specialist (the Rambo-inspired THUNDER WARRIOR trilogy, the Namsploitation OPERATION: NAM, aka COBRA MISSION) Fabrizio De Angelis under his trusty "Larry Ludman" pseudonym, KILLER CROCODILE doesn't waste any time, showing the titular beast front and center about 40 seconds into the film. Taking a page from 1980's ALLIGATOR, the croc here is an oversized mutant thanks to chemical contamination, in this case radioactive waste in barrels clandestinely dumped in a river surrounding an impoverished Caribbean island. A team of environmental activists led by Kevin (Anthony Crenna, son of the late, great Character Actor Hall-of-Famer Richard Crenna) are journeying along the river to find and expose the illegal waste disposal that's been orchestrated by corporate hatchet man Foley (Florida-based regional actor Bill Wohrman--credited as "Wohrman Williams"--who had a small role as a cop in PORKY'S and PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY), who keeps getting away with it because he's got a flunky with the corrupt local judge (Van Johnson--a long way from THE CAINE MUTINY--as Murray Hamilton) who represents the law on the island.
When one of the activists disappears, the judge blows off the concerns of her friends, and when her mutilated body is later found with clear evidence of crocodile chomping, the judge and Foley go full "Fake News" and accuse Kevin and the others of killing her. That lasts about a minute and a half until the massive croc destroys a dock and kills a few locals in the process. With the judge nervous about his corruption being made public and Foley threatening to "reveal who you really are," in a pointless attempt at throwing in a red herring (unless he's the croc wearing a Van Johnson disguise), Kevin and the activists team with wily local crocodile expert Joe (Ennio Girolami as Robert Shaw) to hunt down the beast and expose Foley's nefarious actions. De Angelis throws in a good amount of gore and dismemberment in the croc attacks, and there's no shortage of nonsensical bits that connoisseurs of Italian ripoffs know and love, such as the repeated mention of a big reveal about the judge not being much at all (he's a fugitive ex-con...big deal); dubious dubbing; Riz Ortolani's score being little more than barely tweaked John Williams/JAWS cues; members of Kevin's group swimming around in contaminated water and deciding to make camp right by a shore lined with visible barrels stamped "Radioactive," ample proof that Foley and the judge are doing a pretty shitty job of keeping their activities buried, and a riotous outboard-motor-in-the-mouth demise for the croc at the hands of a crazed Kevin.
The most ridiculous character is Joe the Crocodile Whisperer, with his good luck hat that he tosses to Kevin for inspiration in an incredible scene that begins with Joe riding the Giannetto De Rossi-designed croc like the redressed immobile surfboard that it likely is, and earlier sensing the croc is near and talking to it from the boat, calling it a "pollywog" and advising Kevin that "They get really crazy when you insult them." It's not quite the USS Indianapolis monologue, but you get what you pay for, and it's good enough for KILLER CROCODILE. It's not quite Henry Fonda in TENTACLES or Richard Harris in STRIKE COMMANDO 2, but it's still strange seeing a beloved figure from Hollywood's Golden Age like Johnson doing some late-career slumming here, but work's work, and he was appearing in quite of few of these Italian exploitation obscurities during this period, including Stelvio Massi's never-completed slasher film TAXI KILLER, Ettore Pasculli's post-apocalyptic sci-fi FLIGHT FROM PARADISE, and Pierluigi Ciriaci's DELTA FORCE COMMANDO 2. KILLER CROCODILE never even made it to US video stores and didn't even make much of an impression in Italy, but that didn't stop De Angelis from releasing the immediate sequel KILLER CROCODILE 2 the next year, shot back-to-back with its predecessor.
KILLER CROCODILE 2 (Italy - 1990) Directed by Giannetto De Rossi. Written by David Parker Jr. (Dardano Sacchetti), Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis) and Giannetto De Rossi. Cast: Anthony Crenna, Debra Karr, Thomas Moore (Ennio Girolami), Terry Baer, Hector Alvarez, Alan Bult, Paul Summers, Tony De Noia, Peter Schreiber, Franco Fantasia. (Unrated, 87 mins) Now available as part of a limited-edition two-disc Blu-ray set with KILLER CROCODILE, the even lesser-seen 1990 sequel KILLER CROCODILE 2 was cranked out so cheaply and so quickly that it doesn't even bother roping in a past-his-prime, "and with"-worthy name actor to pull Van Johnson special appearance duty. Fabrizio De Angelis farmed out directing chores to veteran Italian makeup effects designer Giannetto De Rossi, best known to genre fans for his trailblazing splatter work on Lucio Fulci gorefests like ZOMBIE and THE BEYOND. De Rossi designed the croc in KILLER CROCODILE, and constructs a bigger and even more ridiculous one here. An offspring of the first film's title monster, Killer Crocodile Jr. proves to be a huge disruption to the development of a tourist resort that's certain to boost the economy of the impoverished area, which somehow hasn't become a huge cancer cluster with all the barrels of radioactive waste being dumped in the area. The potential contamination is why NYC reporter Liza Post (Debra Karr) is sent to investigate only to spend much of her time fighting off leering locals in addition to the rampaging croc. It's first seen devouring a vacationing couple, then attacking two boats filled with schoolkids and their nun chaperones, followed by an insane scene where it plows into a hut in what looks like the world's worst Kool-Aid Man impression. Once Liza confirms the existence of radioactive waste, her boss calls in ace environmentalist Kevin (a returning Anthony Crenna, now dubbed by Ted Rusoff), who seeks out his old buddy Joe the Crocodile Whisperer (Ennio Girolami, dubbed by Robert Spafford), left hobbled and even more crazy after his fateful encounter with the first toxic monstrosity, resulting in him behaving less like JAWS' Quint and more like an Obi-Wan Kenobi-like Jedi master ("I feel something," he says, looking out at still water).
Starting with using the same Riz Ortolani score, KILLER CROCODILE 2 has all the tell-tale signs of a quickie sequel. While the crocodile set pieces are more over-the-top in terms of execution and splatter--with a climactic battle between Kevin and the croc that features an Anthony Crenna action figure attached to a toy croc in some shots that not even Antonio Margheriti would deem acceptable--the rest is padded with stock footage from the first film (including recycling the same initial appearance of the crocodile, which is just flipped) and absurdly longer-than-necessary establishing shots of buildings, people walking into offices, Crenna and Girolami on the boat, pans across the river, etc. It has to resort to these tactics just to make it to 87 minutes, yet somehow, top-billed Crenna doesn't even appear until around 40 minutes in. The actor is on hand for an interview in the KILLER CROCODILE extras (he now goes by "Richard Anthony Crenna") and explains that he went to Rome in the late '80s when his dad was working on a movie (most likely LEVIATHAN) and decided to test the waters of the Italian film industry since he wasn't catching any breaks in Hollywood. He quickly nabbed the KILLER CROCODILE gig, probably on the basis of his known surname, and recalls it being a fun shoot in Santo Domingo even though there were language barriers, the production got caught in a hurricane, and he contracted dysentery at one point. He returned for the sequel, which again took him to Santo Domingo, but when De Angelis offered him the lead in De Rossi's TERMINATOR ripoff CY WARRIOR immediately following the back-to-back KILLER CROCODILEs (and again scheduled to shoot in Santo Domingo), he turned it down because he was ready to return home, with the part eventually going to Frank Zagarino. Crenna's only notable acting job came with a recurring role on ROSWELL a decade later, as things ultimately didn't pan out for him like they did for his father. As with John Wayne's youngest son Ethan Wayne in 1985's THE MANHUNT and 1987's OPERATION: NAM, De Angelis did his best to make Anthony Crenna happen, but the young actor probably would've found more success in the Italian B-movie industry if he made the move a few years earlier. By 1989-90, the entire Italian genre scene was on life support aside from whatever Dario Argento or Michele Soavi were doing, as evidenced by neither KILLER CROCODILE film finding any US home video distribution.
EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS aka TRAP THEM AND KILL THEM (Italy - 1977/US release 1984) Directed by Joe D'Amato (Aristide Massaccesi). Written by Romano Scandariato and Aristide Massaccesi. Cast: Laura Gemser, Gabriele Tinti, Susan Scott (Nieves Navarro), Donald O'Brien, Percy Hogan, Monica Zanchi, Annamarie Clementi, Geoffrey Copleston, Dirce Funari, Cindy Leadbetter. (Unrated, 93 mins) The penultimate entry in the Joe D'Amato/Laura Gemser "Black Emanuelle" series, EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS is a mash-up of the softcore porn that defined the films to that point, fused with the burgeoning cannibal craze that would explode in Italy over the next few years. Umberto Lenzi's MAN FROM DEEP RIVER (1972) got the ball rolling, but it was more of a MAN CALLED HORSE ripoff that kept its extreme gore limited to very small doses. It was Ruggero Deodato's JUNGLE HOLOCAUST (1977), aka THE LAST SURVIVOR and his landmark CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980) that really established the subgenre as it would come to be known, along with Sergio Martino's MOUNTAIN OF THE CANNIBAL GOD (1978) and Lenzi's double-shot of EATEN ALIVE (1980) and CANNIBAL FEROX (1981), the latter being pretty much the last word in the purely exploitative nature of the Italian cannibal gut-muncher cycle. To that end, D'Amato (real name: Aristide Massaccesi) was a bit ahead of the curve in 1977. Over the course of 1976 and 1977, he'd already sent Gemser's intrepid, globe-trotting, and sexually adventurous photojournalist Emanuelle to Bangkok in EMANUELLE IN BANGKOK, America in EMANUELLE IN AMERICA, and around the world in EMANUELLE AROUND THE WORLD. After the snuff film and bestiality extremes of EMANUELLE IN AMERICA, D'Amato probably figured the cannibal subgenre was the only transgressive depth to plummet. That is, until he decided necrophilia was a viable horror film subject with 1979's BEYOND THE DARKNESS.
But for its first half, it's mostly a standard EMANUELLE affair: there's one gratuitous sex scene after another, with a pretty ballsy one on the banks of the East River in broad daylight, between the Brooklyn and the Manhattan Bridges, with locals and some tourists on a passing ferry presumably getting an eyeful (this scene is shot in the same spot as the opening of Lucio Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER and Yul Brynner's introduction in Antonio Margheriti's DEATH RAGE). Emanuelle is first seen undercover doing an expose of a NYC mental institution (an obvious Rome studio interior, with signs reading "Farmacy" and "Phisical Therapy") with a typically conspicuous camera, this one hidden behind the blinking eyes of a doll. One patient (Cindy Leadbetter) bites off the breast of a lesbian nurse, prompting Emanuelle to graphically grope her for information, discovering a tattoo just above her pubic region that's the sign of the Tupinamba, the last cannibal tribe still present in the Amazon jungle. Teaming professionally and sexually with anthropologist Dr. Mark Lester (Gabriele Tinti, Gemser's real-life husband), Emanuelle ventures to the jungle where Lester's old missionary pal Rev. Wilkes (Geoffrey Copleston) has his virginal daughter Isabelle (Monica Zanchi) and nun Sister Angela (Annamaria Clementi) accompany them on their quest to find evidence of the Tupinamba tribe. They eventually cross paths with impotent hunter Donald McKenzie (Donald O'Brien) and his sex-starved, nympho wife Maggie (Nieves Navarro, under her "Susan Scott" pseudonym), who's getting it on with their guide Salvador (Percy Hogan), before running afoul of the Tupinamba who, to the surprise of no one, start hunting, killing, and eating them one by one.
Factor out the plethora of sex scenes, and the set-up of EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS is virtually identical to DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (both films were written by Romano Scandariato), where a group of New Yorkers make their way to the jungle only to encounter cannibals and zombies, thanks to the experiments of the titular doctor (played by the busy O'Brien). Other than the bit of gore in the opening sequence of LAST CANNIBALS, D'Amato waits about an hour before the horror really gets going. Until then, it's a slightly more explicit than usual EMANUELLE outing, with one surprisingly creative bit where D'Amato skips the initial coupling of Emanuelle and Dr. Lester, merely implying it until he flashes back to it later during a cab ride to the airport. It's a like a softcore porn precursor to the non-linear editing style Steven Soderbergh would use to memorable effect with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez in OUT OF SIGHT. Given the context, it's an unusual and inventive decision, demonstrating the kind of pure cinema that one usually doesn't expect to see in a Joe D'Amato joint, whether it's traditional genre fare like THE GRIM REAPER or his ATOR films, his horror/porno crossovers like 1980's EROTIC NIGHTS OF THE LIVING DEAD and 1981's PORNO HOLOCAUST, or the straight-up hardcore porn he'd churn out near the end of his career.
Just out on Blu-ray from Severin, EMANUELLE AND THE LAST CANNIBALS is a film that gives the devout Eurotrash exploitation fan everything they want: near-constant T&A, laughably bad dubbing, misspelled English-as-second-language signs, extreme gore, incredible 1977 NYC location work, a supporting cast filled with Eurocult stalwarts, a catchy Nico Fidenco theme song with "Make Love on the Wing," bullshit claims that it's a true story (citing the work of a fictitious reporter named "Jennifer O'Sullivan"), and the iconic Gemser, who looks even more gorgeous than usual here. And as an added bonus, unlike most of its type in the cannibal cycle, there's no graphic onscreen animal violence, which has always been the biggest obstacle in the "enjoyment" of this stuff (the closest it gets is a friendly chimpanzee helping himself to a Marlboro). It took the film seven years to make it to America, where the short-lived Megastar Films gave it a spotty release on the drive-in and grindhouse circuit in 1984 as TRAP THEM AND KILL THEM, a retitling obviously designed to capitalize on the notoriety of MAKE THEM DIE SLOWLY, the rechristening given to Umberto Lenzi's CANNIBAL FEROX when it hit the US in 1983. D'Amato and Gemser would make one more EMANUELLE film with 1978's EMANUELLE AND THE WHITE SLAVE TRADE, which features copious amounts of redubbed stock footage from earlier entries (Emanuelle's meeting with her editor and shots of Gemser and Tinti driving around NYC--complete with a theater showing KENTUCKY FRIED MOVIE--are lifted completely from LAST CANNIBALS), plus an amazing newly-shot bowling alley brawl. Though the D'Amato-run "Black Emanuelle" series would wrap up after WHITE SLAVE TRADE, Gemser starred in a few offshoots as a character named "Emanuelle," most notably a pair of wonderfully nasty and batshit Bruno Mattei women-in-prison classics with 1982's VIOLENCE IN A WOMEN'S PRISON (released in the US in 1984 as CAGED WOMEN) and 1983's WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (released in the US in 1985). Gemser retired from acting following Tinti's death from cancer in 1991, though she worked behind the scenes as a costume and wardrobe designer on several Filmirage productions, most notably the cult classic TROLL 2. She's spent the last 25 years almost completely out of the public eye, resurfacing only for a few audio interviews and one on-camera interview for a 2000 British TV documentary on Sylvia Kristel's EMMANUELLE movies.
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.
MANHATTAN BABY aka EYE OF THE EVIL DEAD (Italy - 1982; US release 1984) Directed by Lucio Fulci. Written by Elisa Livia Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti. Cast: Christopher Connelly, Martha Taylor (Laura Lenzi), Brigitta Boccoli, Giovanni Frezza, Cinzia de Ponti, Laurence Welles (Cosimo Cinieri), Andrea Bosic, Carlo De Mejo, Lucio Fulci, Martin Sorrentino. (R, 89 mins) Released to US drive-ins and grindhouses in 1984 by 21st Century as EYE OF THE EVIL DEAD, this 1982 Lucio Fulci film is best known by its original and subsequent home video title, MANHATTAN BABY, and while it's far from the director's best effort, it's better than its reputation. Viewers of the much-maligned MANHATTAN BABY are usually disappointed that it's not as gory as most titles from Fulci's unstoppable 1979-1982 classic era, but it does have its charms. It's also noteworthy as the last collaboration between Fulci and producer Fabrizio De Angelis after several years of trailblazing gore classics like ZOMBIE (1979), THE BEYOND (1981), THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY (1981), and THE NEW YORK RIPPER (1982), the duo having an irreparable falling out over some eleventh hour budget cuts on this film, which co-writer Dardano Sacchetti estimated to be in the neighborhood of 75%. After this, De Angelis started calling himself "Larry Ludman" and concentrated on directing Italian ripoffs of popular American action films, and though he kept working with other producers throughout the '80s on films like CONQUEST, MURDER ROCK, and ZOMBI 3, Fulci never scaled the glorious heights of his De Angelis years, his prolific golden era effectively coming to a close by the time MANHATTAN BABY and THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY hit US theaters in 1984.
One big problem with MANHATTAN BABY is that Sacchetti, his co-writer and wife Elisa Livia Briganti, and Fulci can't seem to settle on what they're ripping off: there's elements of 1980's THE AWAKENING, a little of 1982's POLTERGEIST, plus a climax that seems like a tamer version of 1973's THE EXORCIST. Gore is minimal, confined mainly to a ridiculous bird attack near the end. Christopher Connelly (around the same time he played the hapless Hot Dog in Enzo G. Castellari's 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS) is archaeologist George Hacker, who uncovers a mysterious force in Egypt and is temporarily blinded, and his daughter Susie (Brigitta Boccoli) is given a strange medallion by a blind old crone who vanishes into thin air. Back in NYC, Susie is slowly possessed by the force, sand turns up in Susie's and little brother Tommy's (Giovanni Frezza, best known as THE HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY's "Bob") bedroom, colleagues start getting killed, and a pervasive Evil seems to be taking hold. This leads Hacker and his wife Emily (Laura Lenzi, credited as "Martha Taylor," for some reason) to consult mysterious antiques dealer Adrian Mercato (MURDER ROCK's Cosimo Cinieri, billed as "Laurence Welles") who seems to know something, and lucky for him the Hackers apparently never saw ROSEMARY'S BABY, since Mercato shares the name of the title hellspawn, for no particular reason.
US theatrical poster. "George" Frezza?!
The pace is a little slow, there isn't the level of gore one usually associates with early '80s Fulci, and the title is terrible, but it's atmospheric, the NYC and Cairo locations are very well-shot by cinematographer Guglielmo Mancori (SPASMO), and though the bulk of the score is simply older Fabio Frizzi cues from the Fulci classics CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD and THE BEYOND (thanks to the budget cuts), the composer's main theme ranks among the best of his career. MANHATTAN BABY is definitely not the place for aspiring Fulciphiles to begin their explorations, but time has been kind to it, and even its biggest longtime detractors are slowly coming around to admitting that it's not deserving of its bad rep. Blue Underground's new Blu-ray is a three-disc special edition that includes a cd of Frizzi's score, and should further make the case for MANHATTAN BABY's belated acceptance.
DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. (Italy - 1982) Directed by Frank Martin (Marino Girolami). Written by Frank Martin (Romano Scandariato). Cast: Ian McCulloch, Alexandra Cole (Alexandra Delli Colli), Donald O'Brien, Sherry Buchanan, Peter O'Neal, Dakar, Walter Patriarca, Franco Ukmar, Angelo Ragusa, Romano Scandariato, Roy Frumkes. (R, 82 mins) One of the most notorious Italian gorefests of the 42nd Street grindhouse glory days, DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. benefitted from an attention-getting ad campaign courtesy of its US distributor, Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing. The Australian Levene became a successful B-movie distributor and theatrical exhibitor in NYC, with his office located just above the marquee of the Selwyn Theater on 42nd Street. He acquired the US rights to the 1980 Italian horror film ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, a low-rent gut-muncher that hopped on two trends at once with its inclusion of both cannibals (Ruggero Deodato's CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST) and zombies (Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE). It even utilized some still-standing sets seen in ZOMBIE, courtesy of producer Fabrizio De Angelis, who also brought along co-stars Ian McCulloch and Dakar. Directed by veteran comedy filmmaker Marino Girolami (father of Eurocult icon Enzo G. Castellari) under the pseudonym "Frank Martin," ZOMBI HOLOCAUST was a serviceable entry in the gore galore cycle that followed the template of many Italian horror films at the time (opening 20 minutes set in NYC with some vintage location shooting before the action shifts to a jungle and/or tropical island) but suffered from a low budget, unconvincing latex and rubber effects, and some sloppy filmmaking, as evidenced by what is hands-down the greatest dummy death in film history.
When Levene got hold of ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, he wanted to make it look and sound more American. He bought a few minutes of footage from TALES THAT WILL TEAR YOUR HEART OUT, an unfinished and abandoned anthology film that began shooting in 1976. The mastermind behind TALES was Roy Frumkes, later to gain horror notoriety for his DAWN OF THE DEAD documentary DOCUMENT OF THE DEAD (1985), along with the Tenafly Viper-swilling cult classic STREET TRASH (1987), and his most high-profile mainstream gig, a co-writing credit on the 1996 Tom Berenger hit THE SUBSTITUTE. Levene and his editor Jim Markovic took a couple of minutes of Frumkes' footage--featuring Frumkes himself as a shambling zombie--and turned it into the opening credits sequence of BUTCHER, intercut with a couple of shots of ZOMBI HOLOCAUST's zombies, but having nothing whatsoever to do with Girolami's film (Frumkes is credited with "Title Sequence" on BUTCHER). Levene also whittled down some ZOMBI scenes for pacing reasons (Alexandra Delli Colli's character walking into her apartment and burning some incense, a long dialogue scene during the ride to the jungle compound of the villain), and replaced most of Nico Fidenco's far more appropriate score with one by NYC-based musician/inventor/producer Walter Sear, the owner of Sear Sound Studio and a pioneer in the use of synthesizers. Sear's work on DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. will not go down as his finest hour, as his endless and amazingly tuneless assault of random bleeps, blips, and bloops sounds like an unsupervised kid fucking around on a Casio keyboard in Radio Shack circa 1982, undermining any kind of suspense that might've been building. At the same time, it's a key ingredient in what makes DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. so endearing to fans of trashy movies. It's not like ZOMBI HOLOCAUST was a serious film--it was already a crummy movie with idiotic dialogue ("I could easily kill you now...but I'm determined to have your brain!") and laughable gore effects before Levene got his paws on it--but its Americanization into DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. gives it much of its Bad Movie charm and takes it very close to the level of Eurotrash grindhouse Nirvana rarely rarely experienced with movies not titled PIECES. And when it was ready to go, Levene wanted the denizens of 42nd Street to line up, so he promoted the hell out of it in a very memorable way: with a trailer narrated by Adolph Caesar (two years away from an Oscar nomination for A SOLDIER'S STORY) that promised "DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D...Medical Deviate!," poster art that misled people into expecting a slasher film ("...and he makes house calls!"), and most effectively, by renting a flatbed truck and adorning it with DOCTOR BUTCHER artwork and driving it around Manhattan in the days prior to the film's release on May 7, 1982. The "Butchermobile," as it was soon dubbed, was seen by everyone and word spread like wildfire. DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. was an instant 42nd Street legend thanks to Levene's canny marketing.
The plot, such as it is, deals with a Manhattan hospital morgue beset by a serial mutilator who's helping himself to the limbs and organs of cadavers. The culprit turns out to be an orderly with ties to a Caribbean cult that worships a cannibal god called Kito. This is deduced by nurse Lori Ridgeway (Delli Colli, credited as "Alexandra Cole" in the BUTCHER version, and best known for her performance as the doomed, high society nympho in Fulci's THE NEW YORK RIPPER), who also dabbles in anthropology on the side and even has a priceless Kito dagger in her apartment. That dagger is stolen and her apartment is ransacked, which sends her and NYC health department chief Peter Chandler (McCulloch), along with his associate George (Peter O'Neal) and pushy reporter Susan (Sherry Buchanan), to the Moluccas, a group of islands off the coast of New Guinea. They're welcomed by Dr. Obrero (Donald O'Brien), a famed researcher who's secretly been conducting brain transplant experiments on unwilling victims. Those victims have become his slave-like zombies, which eventually leads to a clash of zombies and cannibal natives, with the NYC interlopers caught in the middle, and with rare exception, becoming either a zombie or dinner. One could argue that ZOMBI/BUTCHER was imaginative in the way it combined two Italian horror trends in zombies and cannibalism, and it's interesting to see the initially threatening cannibals get scared off by the walking dead and eventually coming to the aid of the remaining New Yorkers when they're under attack by Obrero's zombies. But that's about all the credit one can give DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. on any creative level. It's a rudimentary splatter movie that's entertaining for all the wrong reasons, and its attitude toward indigenous people is barbaric at best, as evidenced by George's stunning lack of sympathy toward their native tour guides. When one is brutally killed, the remaining two--dubbed by voices that make them sound developmentally disabled--are understandably frightened, to which George barks "Bury your friend here...and be quick about it!" When the last of the hapless guides is impaled, clinging to life and gasping his last final breaths, the Big Apple intruders gather around and basically shrug while impatiently waiting for him to die, looking more inconvenienced than afraid. O'Neal's George is a complete asshole, so it's actually a crowd-pleasing moment when he's attacked about halfway through and endures what's probably the film's grossest death scene, if you don't count Peter shredding a zombie's head with a small outboard motor.
I love DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D., and it's been hard to see in that form for quite some time. While a Paragon VHS could be found in any video store in the 1980s, since the advent of DVD, the only version readily available in the US was the original ZOMBI HOLOCAUST cut, released by Media Blasters in 2002. It featured the Frumkes footage as an extra, but did not include the drastically altered and rescored BUTCHER cut that caused such a sensation in Times Square in 1982. That's no longer the case, thanks to Severin's new two-disc Blu-ray set, which features both DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. and ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, with each disc accompanied by a ton of extras--the best being an interview with the now 86-year-old Levene and a tour through 42nd Street history with Frumkes and Temple of Schlock guru and exploitation historian Chris Poggiali--plus a limited edition barf bag! It's as close to a definitive, Criterion-level last-word on all things DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. as you're going to get, though Severin did make the curious decision to add a strange scene that was unique to the BUTCHER cut--McCulloch and Delli Colli encountering a couple of cannibals as she falls into a pit trap--back into the ZOMBI HOLOCAUST version. This scene isn't discussed on any of the bonus features, but sticks out like a sore thumb. McCulloch's clothes are darker than in the scenes before and after and his prominent bald spot, seen throughout Fulci's ZOMBIE, is clearly visible (it's covered with either a combover or a small hairpiece in the rest of the film), and Delli Colli's straight hairstyle is suddenly crimped. This scene was clearly shot after ZOMBI HOLOCAUST was made--did Levene commission it? Though this scene wasn't in ZOMBI HOLOCAUST, Severin put it there for this edition, and that's the only questionable decision of what's otherwise one of 2016's most essential Blu-ray purchases for cult horror fans.
The Butchermobile cruising the streets of NYC in 1982.
Directed by Larry Ludman (Fabrizio De Angelis). Written by Gianfranco Clerici and Vincenzo Mannino. Cast: Oliver Tobias, Ernest Borgnine, Henry Silva, Charles Napier, Martin Balsam, Melissa Palmisano, Jeff Moldovan, Jim Kelly, Jim Kiick, Jim Jensen, Bart Schuchts, Elmer Bailey, Mark Rush. (Unrated, 85 mins)
In a perfect world, THE LAST MATCH would be an integral part of the Super Bowl pre-game show, an ideal time to annually visit one of the all-time dumbest action movies ever barely released to an ambivalent public. Made at the end of the '80s Italian action cycle and, as far
as I can tell, never released in the US, not even on video (IMDb credits Vidmark Entertainment, and the above art--not only showcasing '70s-style "faces in boxes" but also head shots of the actors that actually appear to be from the '70s--has the Imperial Entertainment logo, but neither ended up actually releasing it), this hilariously awful
actioner from director/head coach Fabrizio De Angelis (utilizing his trusty "Larry
Ludman" alias seen on such 1980s video store mainstays as the THUNDER WARRIOR trilogy, DEADLY IMPACT and the KARATE KID ripoff KARATE WARRIOR), with input from offensive coordinator Gianfranco Clerici and
special teams coach Vincenzo Mannino, fails to execute its howler of a game plan,
drawing multiple flags for sheer idiocy.
Pro football quarterback Cliff Gaylor
(Oliver Tobias) calls an audible (OK, I'll stop) when his daughter Jenny (Melissa Palmisano)
is falsely accused of drug smuggling and thrown in prison while vacationing in
an unnamed Latin American country. After a useless US Embassy official (Charles
Napier) does nothing but refer him to a corrupt local attorney (a profusely
sweaty Martin Balsam), Gaylor thinks all hope is lost. That is, until his gruff,
fatherly coach (Ernest Borgnine) shows up with the team to draw up the perfect game plan. And Borgnine is a coach who really thinks outside the box: the team brought along their uniforms and
equipment, along with props like a sliced-open football, into which their kicker stuffs a grenade and punts at a hovering chopper! Coach Borgnine and his
special infrared binoculars are able to survey the prison and he directs his
players where to fire and when to attack, which they do with enthusiastic grunts
of "Hut! Hut! Hut!" as they crash through doors and walls, guns blazing, clad in full
game-day attire. Why? Because it's the biggest game of their lives! Evil,
leering prison warden Henry Silva never stands a chance against this Hall of
Shame team!
I'm not making this up. This movie is for real. It exists. Don't believe me? Well, here you go:
The above clip, coupled with the one below, is essentially THE LAST MATCH in a nutshell. This second clip gives you more "Hut! Hut! Hut!" football commando action, Henry Silva overacting, Coach Ernie's infrared binoculars, staggeringly bad music, a sleepy Tobias, and even an inside-the-helmet POV shot.
THE LAST MATCH probably sounds a lot more delirious than it plays. It's carelessly shot and lacks even the production values of cheap Italian action films of just a few years earlier, with much of the budget obviously going to aging, coasting vets like Borgnine, Balsam, and Silva. But once the football commandos suit up and raid Silva's prison, it becomes every bit the lunatic idiocy that the poster promises. The film was shot in Florida, and adding to its insanity is that it also offers supporting roles for a few
off-season or retired football players with Florida ties as members of Coach Ernie's football commando unit: former Florida State star and then-Buffalo
Bills QB Jim Kelly (early in the Bills' 1989-93 stretch of Super Bowl futility,
for which THE LAST MATCH must at least be partially accountable) and all-purpose Miami Dolphin Jim "Crash" Jensen are clearly visible, along with some retired Dolphins like tailback Mike Kozlowsky, receiver Elmer Bailey and Jim Kiick, a RB with the legendary undefeated 1972 team. Former Miami Hurricanes RB Mark Rush and Bart Schuchts, a Florida State standout and then-linebacker for the Arena League's Denver Dynamite, also appear. Has Jim Kelly ever fessed up to being in this thing? There's no mention of it on his Wikipedia page or his web site. Why is he in this? How did this happen? Did he have nothing better to do in his offseason? Kelly was at the height of his career in 1990--it's amazing that he wasn't used to sell this in the US. I
wonder why they didn't just go ahead and make this an outright comedy. It's
actually played totally serious, though Borgnine seems to be at least partially
amused. Silva doesn't do much but smirk at Tobias, leer at Palmisano and yell at
his guards, while Napier and Balsam aren't even in it enough to register.
Tobias, who previously played for Coach Fabrizio on the much better COBRA MISSION (aka OPERATION NAM), is terrible, trying to be all grim and pissed-off
but looking more like he took a sedative that's just starting to kick
in.
Packed with establishing and filler shots that take entirely too much
screen time (not to mention a completely anti-climactic ten-minute coda that just proves De Angelis has no idea how to piece together a convincing-looking football game), clumsy shots of the unnamed Latin American country that happens to have Florida highway signs, an utterly terrible score, slumming name actors (including two Oscar winners in Borgnine and Balsam), a
woefully weak lead performance, and arguably the most ridiculous premise in all
of 1980s (for all practical purposes) Italian B-movie action, THE LAST MATCH is
a total fumble, but a must-see for all bad-movie aficionados.
