YETI: THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY (Italy - 1977)
Directed by Frank Kramer (Gianfranco Parolini). Written by Marcello Coscia, Gianfranco Parolini and Mario Di Nardo. Cast: Phoenix Grant (Antonella Interlenghi), Jim Sullivan (Matteo Zoffoli), Tony Kendall, Mimmo Crao, Eddy Fay (Edoardo Faieta), John Stacy, Steve Elliot (Stelio Candelli), Loris Bazoky (Loris Bazzocchi), Donald O'Brien, Al Canti, Francesco D'Adda, Giuseppe Mattei, Claudio Zucchet, Stefano Cedrati, The American Collie Indio. (Unrated, 101 mins) Dino De Laurentiis' blockbuster 1976 remake of KING KONG got trashed by critics but was a big hit with audiences, so of course the ripoffs were inevitable. Two were even quickly rushed into production when it was announced: the 3-D South Korean A*P*E (starring a pre-GROWING PAINS Joanna Kerns), which beat KING KONG into US theaters by two months, and the British-West German spoof QUEEN KONG cut it much closer, hitting European theaters a week before KING KONG's Christmas 1976 premiere (it was never released theatrically in the States). The Hong Kong THE MIGHTY PEKING MAN was in Asian theaters in the summer of 1977 and would eventually be released in the US in 1980 as GOLIATHON, then languishing in obscurity until its 1999 resurrection on the midnight movie circuit courtesy of Quentin Tarantino's Rolling Thunder Pictures. America's lowly Monarch Releasing Corporation dusted off a 1968 Italian jungle horror adventure called KONG ISLAND--a Dick Randall production with peplum star Brad Harris as a mercenary vs. Marc Lawrence as a mad scientist doing mind control experiments on gorillas that had nothing to do with a giant ape--and shamelessly dumped it in drive-ins in 1978 like a flaming bag of dog shit at someone's doorstep as KING OF KONG ISLAND. Surprisingly, the usually savvy ripoff masters in the Italian exploitation industry were a little slow in their response, taking an entire year to release YETI: THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY.
Partly shot in Toronto, giving it a slight era-appropriate Canadian tax-shelter vibe (where's George Touliatos?), YETI found journeyman director Gianfranco Parolini--using his usual "Frank Kramer" pseudonym--on a career downturn. Parolini enjoyed some success in the 1960s with his KOMMISSAR X series of 007 knockoffs, and later with his 1969-1971 SABATA spaghetti western trilogy (the first and third with Lee Van Cleef, the second with Yul Brynner). Parolini was coming off of 1976's GOD'S GUN, an Italian-Israeli spaghetti western with Lee Van Cleef, Jack Palance, Richard Boone, Sybil Danning, and teen idol Leif Garrett. It was both an early Golan-Globus production and one of the worst spaghetti westerns ever made, and certainly the worst with actors of that caliber. Parolini's slump continued with the laughably cheap KING KONG cash-in YETI, which never even scored a US theatrical release, sitting unclaimed for seven years before becoming an early acquisition of a Miramax Films that was still finding its niche. They sold it to syndicated TV in 1984, where YETI's generally family-friendly nature made it a semi-regular presence on Saturday afternoon Creature Features. It eventually found some status as a bad movie favorite after it was broadcast on a 1985 installment of Elvira's "Movie Macabre." A public domain fixture in the era of clearance-bin DVD sets, YETI: THE GIANT OF THE 20TH CENTURY wouldn't seem to be a film anyone was clamoring for in pristine HD clarity, but nevertheless, here we are: it's just been released on a bare bones Blu-ray from Code Red/Dark Force, because physical media is dead.
When a giant, million-year-old creature is found frozen in a block of ice off the coast of Newfoundland, billionaire Toronto industrial magnate H.H. Hunnicut (Edoardo Faieta, billed as "Eddy Fay") sends scientist Prof. Wasserman (John Stacy) to head an excavation team supervised by Hunnicut hatchet man Cliff Chandler (Tony Kendall,the star of the KOMMISSAR X films). Also tagging along are Hunnicut's orphaned grandchildren, Jane (Antonella Interlenghi, billed as "Phoenix Grant") and younger, mute Herbie (Matteo Zoffoli, billed as "Jim Sullivan"), the latter a science enthusiast who, as Jane explains in some clumsily-conveyed dubbed exposition, "lost his voice in the plane crash in which my father and mother died." Once thawed, the creature is revealed to be a Yeti (Mimmo Crao, mostly on his own against a not-100% functioning bluescreen), and it begins showing signs of life with a weak heartbeat. It regains strength and goes on a rampage at the excavation site before being calmed by the presence of Herbie, his dog Indio (played by a collie credited as "The American Collie Indio"), and especially Jane, for whom he develops a classic King Kong/Fay Wray attraction. Against Wasserman's wishes, Hunnicut decides to make the Yeti the trademark logo of all of his businesses, which leads to improbably huge, Yeti-crazed crowds at his gas stations and his supermarkets, where customers line up with a Beatlemania-like fervor for a creepy "Kiss Me Yeti" promotion. Speaking of creepy, look out for Chandler, played by a 41-year-old Kendall, trying to get all up in Jane's business, which would be inappropriate for a family-aimed adventure even if future CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD co-star Interlenghi wasn't just 16 when this was made.
The fantastical elements aside, YETI doesn't exist in any kind of logical reality. Even a cigar-sucking CEO as buffoonishly stupid as Hunnicut would see the danger of staging the Yeti's public introduction to a packed crowd of spectators on the top of a downtown Toronto skyscraper, which goes about as well as you'd expect when the media advances on the terrified creature and starts taking photos with huge flash bulbs going off. Granted, it's an odd twist that the Yeti climbs down the skyscraper instead of up, but then he's loose in the city and somehow sneaking up on people as if he's not anywhere between 30 and 500 ft. tall. Thanks to its cheapness and subpar special effects, the Yeti's size changes drastically from scene to scene before Jane and Herbie lure him to Toronto's Exhibition Stadium (where earlier, Parolini gives us some extended footage of a Blue Jays game during the team's 1977 inaugural season), and later to a warehouse, where Wasserman gives the weakened creature some oxygen via an unusually large nasal cannula that he must've had lying around for just such an occasion. For reasons that are never quite clear, Chandler and two goons (Stelio Candelli, Loris Bazzochi) decide to kill Wasserman and make it look like the Yeti did it, but Herbie and Indio overhear them talking about it, prompting Indio to go full Lassie, running off to bark a warning to Jane. The Yeti once again gets loose and goes after Chandler and his stooges en route to a showdown with the cops, led by future DOCTOR BUTCHER M.D. madman Donald O'Brien, who goes through the finale with an incredulous look on his face that says "Hold on a second...wasn't I in John Frankenheimer's THE TRAIN and GRAND PRIX?"
YETI really deserves to be better-known among bad movie aficionados. Whether its the ridiculous, nonsensical plot machinations; the inability to decide if it wants to be a kiddie movie or an exploitation grinder (Chandler tries to sexually assault Jane at one point during a Yeti rampage, and even his guys are like "What are you doing?!"); the way Herbie is dressed as if young Zoffoli (later seen as a young Sicilian boy in THE BIG RED ONE) got lost on his way to a junior high production of Little Lord Fauntleroy; the way Chandler's getaway car peels out of a downtown Toronto parking lot, and after one turn and a single cut, is immediately on a seaside mountain road, presumably somewhere in Italy; and the peculiarly catchy title jam that's definitely a "Goofy Italian Theme Song" Hall of Famer with its almost "funky OMEN" sound, YETI's idiotic joys are endless. Best of all are the chintzy Yeti bluescreen work and the embarrassing miniatures, with Parolini focusing so much on a cheap toy helicopter that you'd think he was proud of it (don't miss Crao tightly grasping an oversized plastic doll when the Yeti is supposed to be holding Herbie). Cinematographer Sandro Mancori is also credited with "Blue back," and he had a lengthy career as a never-exemplary but certainly competent D.P., with several credits for directors like Parolini, Antonio Margheriti, and Enzo G. Castellari, that one must assume he was doing the best he could here under the circumstances. This is a corner-cutting production, and the only conclusion you can really draw is that most of the budget probably went to hotel and airfare getting the Italian cast and crew to Canada and back. After a busy career going back to the 1950s, Parolini took a decade off after YETI, sitting out almost all of the coming Italian exploitation trends (no zombies, no post-nukes, no CONAN ripoffs) before making a one-off return with the little-seen 1987 Philippines-shot Indiana Jones ripoff THE SECRET OF THE INCAS' EMPIRE, starring Italian action D-lister "Conrad Nichols" (real name Bruno Minnetti). Parolini died in 2018 at the age of 93. YETI didn't advance the acting career of Mimmo Crao, who has zero IMDb credits after his stellar work in the title role here. Interestingly, he also had his most high-profile gig the same year, appearing as the apostle Thaddeus in Franco Zeffirelli's hugely popular 1977 NBC miniseries JESUS OF NAZARETH.
BEYOND THE DOOR (Italy - 1974; US release 1975) Directed by Oliver Hellman (Ovidio G. Assonitis) and R. Barrett (Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli). Written by Oliver Hellman (Ovidio G. Assonitis), Antonio Troisio, R. Barrett (Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli), Giorgio Marini, Aldo Crudo, Alex Rebar and Christopher Cruise. Cast: Juliet Mills, Richard Johnson, Gabriele Lavia, Nino Segurini, Elizabeth Turner, Barbara Fiorini, David Colin Jr., Luigi Marturano. (R, 98 mins/108 mins) When THE EXORCIST became a worldwide phenomenon in late 1973 and into 1974, it didn't take long for countless imitations, mostly from Italy, to spew forth. The most famous of these Italian ripoffs was BEYOND THE DOOR, which managed to fuse together elements of both THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY and, with the help of a memorably terrifying TV spot, became a surprise hit when it opened in the US over the spring and summer of 1975. It also infamously caught the attention of Warner Bros., who sued the producers and US distributor Film Ventures for copyright infringement. The case was eventually settled and BEYOND THE DOOR was never pulled from distribution, unlike ABBY, a 1974 blaxploitation EXORCIST knockoff that was withdrawn from circulation and hasn't been legitimately seen in decades, though poor-quality presentations of it aren't hard to find on YouTube and torrent sites. None of the other Italian EXORCIST ripoffs--among them 1974's THE ANTICHRIST (released in the US as THE TEMPTER in 1978), 1974's THE TORMENTED (released in the US in 1978 and rechristened for cable and home video in 1981 as THE EERIE MIDNIGHT HORROR SHOW), 1975's THE NIGHT CHILD, 1975's THE RETURN OF THE EXORCIST, aka CRIES AND SHADOWS (released in the US in 1977 as THE POSSESSOR), 1975's THE HOUSE OF EXORCISM (the retooled version of Mario Bava's 1973 film LISA AND THE DEVIL, featuring added possession scenes with Elke Sommer being exorcised by priest Robert Alda)--or the 1975 Spanish knockoff EXORCISM with Paul Naschy and the 1974 German copycat MAGDALENA, POSSESSED BY THE DEVIL (released in the US in 1976 as BEYOND THE DARKNESS), faced any legal action from Warner Bros. And though some of the them took a long time to get to the US, the fad pretty much died out in Europe by 1977, with only a few sexploitative stragglers like 1978's softcore OBSCENE DESIRE and 1979's MALABIMBA, the latter a product of Italy's short-lived determination to make horror/porno crossovers a thing.
But it's BEYOND THE DOOR that remains the signature Italian EXORCIST ripoff, and it's just been released in a comprehensive, limited-edition Blu-ray box set from Arrow, because physical media is dead. It's been out on DVD and Blu before from Code Red, and some of those extras are carried over here, but Arrow has done a magnificent job with its 2K restoration of the 108-minute European version, titled THE DEVIL WITHIN HER, and the 98-minute US cut (you also get a poster and a 56-page booklet with essays). Juliet Mills stars as Jessica Barrett, a wife and mother of two who finds she's unexpectedly pregnant with a third, something that wasn't really in the plans of her record producer husband Robert (Gabriele Lavia). Soon, the fetus is growing at an alarming rate, and she begins vomiting blood and suffering from erratic mood swings. Her young son Ken (David Colin, Jr) witnesses her levitating in the middle of the night, while daughter Gail (Barbara Fiorini) goes to check on her only to be greeted with a grin as Jessica's head turns completely around, amidst other disturbing, inexplicable activity. At the same time, Robert notices he's being followed by a serious-looking mystery man named Dimitri (Richard Johnson), who says he knows what's happening to Jessica and insists he's the only one who can help her.
BEYOND THE DOOR opening in Toledo, OH on 8/15/1975
BEYOND THE DOOR might shamelessly crib from THE EXORCIST's highlight reel, but it's got plenty of its own wacky ideas. It seems Dimitri and Jessica were once lovers long before she met Robert. And in what turned out to be a real relationship-killer, she left him when he took her to a black mass where she was supposed to be the sacrifice. Yes, Dimitri is a Satanist who promised Jessica to the Devil, and the Devil--who frequently taunts Dimitri in voiceover--is pissed-off at Dimitri's incompetence and wants restitution in the form of Jessica's baby. And he's given Dimitri only a few days to procure it or he's going to die. As Jessica's possession and pregnancy grow more intense--complete with the mandatory demonic voice, green puke, and various obscenities ("Get out of here, you piece of shit!," Lick the vile whore's vomit!" etc, etc), along with a craving for discarded banana peels--Dimitri manages to convince Robert to let him tend to Jessica, though it's only a desperate effort to get the child. It's an interesting approach in that the "exorcist" figure is there not out of the sense of spiritual altruism to save the possessed but rather, just to save his own sorry ass, and to their credit, Mills (who had recently co-starred with Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's AVANTI) and Johnson (THE HAUNTING) both appear to be taking this thing seriously and aren't coasting through for a quick paycheck.
Johnson imbues his rather silly dialogue ("The child...must be born!") with a generous amount of Royal Shakespeare Company gravitas, and Mills, the daughter of Oscar-winning actor John Mills and the older sister of early '60s Disney star Hayley Mills, really brings her A-game to a decidedly lowbrow production that was perhaps a tad beneath the family name ("Oh, I doubt Daddy ever saw this," she jokes on one of the ported-over commentaries). The possession histrionics aren't quite as intense as THE EXORCIST (there's no crucifix bit here, though there is a weird moment when Jessica kisses her young son for a uncomfortably long time), but their effectiveness is given a significant boost by an unnervingly bass-heavy sound design and by Mills' total commitment. The scene where she sits in a chair asking doctor and family friend George (Nino Segurini) "Who are you?" in a deep, guttural voice while Jessica seems to be internally fighting off the demon, quickly going back and forth in rapid-fire fashion from possessed to normal ("Help me, I'm so scared"), with Mills employing just slight changes in her facial expressions that you manage to see her through the contact lenses, the horrific makeup, and the chunky green vomit caking on her chin, is some legitimately terrific acting on her part.
BEYOND THE DOOR in Toledo, OH on 8/15/1975
Mills and Johnson class up the joint, but at the end of the day, BEYOND THE DOOR is still tacky as hell, particularly the finale where Dimitri is pounding on her very pregnant belly as the devil instructs him to "reach inside her and pull it out!" Shot in San Francisco with interiors done back in Rome, the film was the brainchild of Egyptian-born Italian exploitation producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (THE VISITOR, PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING), who co-wrote and co-directed under the pseudonym "Oliver Hellman," which he would employ a few more times, most notably on the 1977 Italian JAWS ripoff TENTACLES. Up to this time, Assonitis had a few producer credits (1972's MAN FROM DEEP RIVER, 1974's SUPER STOOGES VS. THE WONDER WOMEN), but BEYOND THE DOOR marked his first directing effort, and he shared duties with cinematographer Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli, who hid under the alias "R. Barrett." Both were among seven (!) credited screenwriters, which included Alex Rebar, who would secure his place in B-movie history with the title role in 1977's THE INCREDIBLE MELTING MAN. Assonitis and D'Ettorre Piazzoli manage to create some scattered images that get under your skin throughout, whether it's the freakish grin on Mills' face during the head spin, or the unexpected use of Sam Peckinpah-style freeze-frames during a demonic fit, or an optical effect where one eye stares straight ahead while the other looks in every direction. With a budget of only $400,000, a good chunk of which likely went to Mills and Johnson, the effects--supervised by Wally Gentleman, who worked on Douglas Trumbull's crew on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and has the most fake Italian pseudonym-sounding name that somehow isn't--are crude but they get the job done.
But there's a lot of quirky touches that don't always work, especially the antics of Jessica's two foul-mouthed kids (their nickname for their dad is "Asshole"), like Gail's obsession with owning over a dozen copies of Erich Segal's Love Story or Ken constantly drinking cans of Campbell's pea soup through a straw, an obvious nod to the colorful prop used for possessed Regan's puking scenes in THE EXORCIST. The film also opens with an offscreen Satan welcoming the audience and introducing the film like an avuncular TV host. When Film Ventures cut ten minutes out of the film for its US release, one of the first things to go had to be a bizarre, nonsensical scene late in the film where Robert is out walking around and is followed by an intimidating guy playing a flute with his nose. This seemingly goes on forever and only seems to be there so Assonitis can show off more San Francisco exteriors, stopping the uncut European version dead in its tracks at a pivotal time. Film Ventures also tossed a scene of Jessica getting groceries at a local Safeway, which was part of the original opening credits sequence showing Robert in the recording studio chewing out a funk band for not getting it right. The band is playing a Franco Micalizzi-written tune called "Bargain with the Devil," and it's an absolute jam that's unfortunately nowhere to be heard in the US version.
BEYOND THE DOOR was such an unexpected sleeper hit stateside that it led to two unrelated "sequels." Mario Bava's 1977 swan song SHOCK was picked up by Film Ventures and released in the US in 1979 as BEYOND THE DOOR II. It involved a little boy being possessed by the spirit of his dead father, and passing it off as a sequel was probably made a lot easier with the happy coincidence of David Colin Jr. playing the little boy. Assonitis had nothing to do with SHOCK or its rechristening as BEYOND THE DOOR II, but he did produce AMOK TRAIN, which had college students stuck on a possessed train while in Yugoslavia for a Balkan Studies research project. Shot in 1989, AMOK TRAIN was eventually released straight-to-video in the US in 1991 as--you guessed it--BEYOND THE DOOR III. The decision was probably inspired by Assonitis producing the minor 1987 horror hit THE CURSE, and then turning his 1989 "guy bitten by radioactive snake" epic THE BITE into the in-name-only CURSE II: THE BITE, an insane film that really should be better-known, and one so gross that the sight of a post-coital Jamie Farr doesn't even make the top five ghastliest things in it.
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.
ROBOWAR (Italy - 1988) Directed by Vincent Dawn (Bruno Mattei). Written by Rossella Drudi. Cast: Reb Brown, Catherine Hickland, Alex McBride (Massimo Vanni), Romano Puppo, Clyde Anderson (Claudio Fragasso), Max Laurel, Jim Gaines, John P. Dulaney, Mel Davidson. (Unrated, 91 mins) A year after unveiling the never-released-in-the-US SHOCKING DARK, a beyond blatant 1989 Italian ALIENS ripoff, Severin Films has taken another dive into the cinematic cesspool of Flora Film and producer Franco Gaudenzi with the Blu-ray releases (because physical media is dead) of 1988's ROBOWAR and 1990's NIGHT KILLER. Like SHOCKING DARK (shamelessly released in Italy as TERMINATOR 2), neither of these two Italian ripoffs ever made it into US theaters or video stores back in the day, though they've been available in inferior quality versions on the bootleg and torrent circuit for years. Reuniting the star (Reb Brown) and director (Bruno Mattei) of 1987's immortal RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II ripoff STRIKE COMMANDO, ROBOWAR doesn't even try to hide the fact that it's stealing entire set-ups, scenes, and plot points from the previous year's Schwarzenegger smash PREDATOR. BrownIS Major Murphy Black, the tough-as-nails leader of a mercenary unit called BAM ("It stands for Big Ass Motherfuckers"). He and his men have been commissioned by government stooge Mascher (Mel Davidson) for a mission to help take out some rebels who have gained control of island that's been wiped out by a cholera outbreak. The real mission, known only to Mascher: to find and eliminate Omega 1, a State Department-funded robot killing machine secretly "created by a team of bionic experts" and sent in to kill the rebels but now out of control and on a rampage. Black and his men--Guarini, aka "Diddy Bopper" (Massimo Vanni), Corey (Romano Puppo), Quang (Max Laurel), Peel, aka "Blood" (Jim Gaines), and pipe-smoking medic Papa Doc (John P. Dulaney), plus UN aid worker Virginia (Catherine Hickland), the sole survivor of a hospital massacre by the rebels--are stalked and offed one-by-one in PREDATOR fashion by the helmeted Omega 1, played by both Puppo and future TROLL 2 director and frequent Mattei writing partner Claudio Fragasso, who also stepped in to direct a few scenes when Mattei briefly fell ill on location in the Philippines.
Shot in the same sweltering Filipino jungle locations as most Gaudenzi productions of this period (STRIKE COMMANDO, ZOMBI 3), ROBOWAR wastes a lot of time on tedious stretches where everyone's just walking around and asking "Did you see that?" Brown gets to do his signature Reb Brown yells, but up to a point, it's rather restrained and too hesitant to commit to the all-out insanity of STRIKE COMMANDO or SHOCKING DARK. That is, until the last 15 minutes, when Mattei and screenwriter Rossella Drudi (the wife of Fragasso, who also made some uncredited contributions to the script) abruptly switch gears and turn it into an out-of-nowhere ROBOCOP ripoff with a revelation about the Omega 1. Only then does ROBOWAR reach the heights of madness usually associated with Mattei and Fragasso, capped off by gaffe-filled closing credits that list Brown playing "Marphy Black" and Hickland playing "Virgin," and misidentify Gaines and Vanni. The hapless Mattei can't even properly copy the PREDATOR heat vision shots thanks to Gaudenzi's cheap-ass budget, with the Omega 1 vision just a blurry pixellation, which begs the question "A high-tech, state-of-the-art US government funded robot killing machine and the best vision they can give it looks just like the scrambled porn you tried to watch when you were 12?" Until the last 15 minutes, ROBOWAR isn't as much fun as it should be, but more interesting for Eurotrash fans is the wealth of extras offered by Severin on the Blu-ray, including interviews with Fragasso, Drudi (two interviews with her), Hickland, Dulaney, Gaines, and Vanni, with at least two of those participants going into specifics about why everyone hated co-star Davidson, a Danish actor who lived and worked on B-movies in the Philippines. Both Dulaney and Gaines describe Davidson as a known pedophile, with Gaines mentioning him being caught in the act with a 12-year-old boy at one point during production, and members of the cast restraining Brown from beating the shit out of him (perhaps the Davidson issue is why Brown, who contributed to the YOR Blu-ray and is a convention regular, is MIA in these extras?)
ROBOWAR in no way inspired by PREDATOR
That's all interesting stuff, but the big treasure among the extras is a 15-minute compilation of on-set home movie footage, blurry but with clear audio, taken by Hickland during some downtime on the shoot. An American soap star married to David Hasselhoff at the time and serving her required stint in the Italian exploitation industry (she was also in WITCHERY with Hasselhoff, and Stelvio Massi's never officially released TAXI KILLER), Hickland managed to get some absolutely priceless footage of the cast and crew goofing off ("There he is, the maestro Bruno," as Mattei waves to the camera from his director's chair, or Brown yelling "Eat your heart out, David!" when she gathers her co-stars--"my guys"--for an impromptu cast introduction that, judging from Davidson being included in the fun, must've been before everyone found out about his off-set activities), specific dates of production (Brown is heard saying "Today is May 1, 1988"), and even a brief interaction ("This guy right here...") with Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti regular Luciano Pigozzi, aka "Alan Collins," who's in the cast credits but nowhere to be found in the released film. Pigozzi is credited but unseen in several Filipino-shot Italian productions of this period (including ZOMBI 3), with IMDb adding a parenthetical "(Scenes deleted)" with each entry. It's unknown why Pigozzi was supposedly cut from so many films, or if he was credited for some kind of quota reason, but Hickland's footage proves he indeed was there on the set. Raise your hand if you ever thought you'd see behind-the-scenes footage from a Filipino-shot Reb Brown/Bruno Mattei joint.
NIGHT KILLER (Italy - 1990) Written and directed by Clyde Anderson (Claudio Fragasso). Cast: Peter Hooten, Tara Buckman, Richard Foster, Mel Davis, Lee Lively, Tova Sardot, Gaby Ford. (Unrated, 93 mins) Shot in Virginia Beach and Norfolk, VA in December 1989, the obscure NIGHT KILLER was a film that Claudio Fragasso envisioned as a serious auteur statement, a psychological thriller that was also a riff on Ingmar Bergman's SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE. Italian schlock producer Franco Gaudenzi didn't like what he saw with Fragasso's initial cut, and while the director was off in Louisiana working on 1990's BEYOND DARKNESS for Joe D'Amato's Filmirage, Gaudenzi had Bruno Mattei shoot an interminable opening sequence and additional murder scenes in Italy, plus several insert shots that significantly cranked up the gore and splatter that was virtually non-existent in Fragasso's cut. This essentially brought an end to Fragasso and Mattei's working relationship, and to top it off, Gaudenzi, taking a page from the ZOMBI 2 and ALIEN 2: ON EARTH playbook, sold the film as TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 3 for its Italian release (the real LEATHERFACE: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE III, released in the US in January 1990, wouldn't hit Europe for another year). The retitling is in complete disregard for the film's Virginia Beach setting and the fact that the killer is clearly inspired by A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET, wearing some rubbery hands with talon-like fingernails and what looks like a knockoff Freddy Krueger mask that Fragasso picked up at a Norfolk Rite-Aid.
After the Mattei-shot opening where an irate choreographer (Gaby Ford) loses her shit with her dancers and storms off only to be disemboweled and tossed off a balcony by the killer, the story shifts to Melanie Beck (Tara Buckman), who's still reeling from the collapse of her marriage to an alcoholic, disgraced cop. She sends her young daughter Clarissa (Tova Sardot) to spend the day with family friends Sherman (Richard Foster) and his wife Annie (an uncredited actress who's terrible) and is soon terrorized by an obscene phone caller who turns out to be calling from inside the house (there's no stated reason for Melanie to have two phone lines, much less ones that dial to phones that are five feet apart). Unable to escape, she faces certain death until Fragasso makes a time jump to Melanie in the hospital, stricken with amnesia and unable to even recognize her own daughter. It seems that offscreen, Sherman returned to the Beck home in the middle of the killer's attack and suffered a facial laceration in the process of saving Melanie when the killer fled the scene. Still suffering from amnesia, Melanie is released from the hospital (?!) and is soon harassed by a creep in a Jeep named Axel (Peter Hooten), who ends up saving her from a suicide attempt not out of the kindness of his heart, but because he wants to kill her his way.
As evidenced by TROLL 2, Fragasso has a knack for setting up an Italian production in an American location and finding local actors who seem like pod people for whom English is, at best, a second language. While TROLL 2 had a cast of amateurs who've gone on to have a good sense of humor about the experience, NIGHT KILLER is anchored by a pair of professional American actors with a long list of credits, yet they still look like they've never been in front of a camera before. Buckman had a TV career going back to the late '70s, and co-starred with Claude Akins on THE MISADVENTURES OF SHERIFF LOBO but is perhaps best known for teaming with Adrienne Barbeau as the cleavage-baring Lamborghini duo in 1981's THE CANNONBALL RUN. By the late '80s, Buckman's career was tanking and she was starring in softcore Italian erotica for Joe D'Amato, like 1989's OBJECT OF DESIRE and 1990's HIGH FINANCE WOMAN. Hooten co-starred in 1977's ORCA and had the title role in the 1978 Marvel TV-movie DR. STRANGE, a pilot for a proposed CBS series that didn't get picked up. His career never really took off stateside but he found quite a bit of work in Italy, like Enzo G. Castellari's THE INGLOURIOUS BASTARDS (1978), Duccio Tessari's THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT (1978) and Joe D'Amato and George Eastman's post-nuke 2020: TEXAS GLADIATORS (1982). He acted sporadically from the mid '80s on and would walk away from the industry after NIGHT KILLER to devote himself to caring for his longtime partner, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Merrill, who would succumb to AIDS in 1995. Hooten virtually disappeared from public life, relocating to his native Florida, though he did emerge from retirement in 2013 for a pair of regionally-produced, no-budget horror movies, HOUSE OF BLOOD and SOULEATER. The latter film was directed by Michael Lang, who conducted a career-spanning interview with Hooten around that time and posted it on YouTube. Fragasso and his wife and uncredited co-writer Rossella Drudi are interviewed in the Blu-ray bonus features, both reiterating how displeased they were with the additional Mattei footage, plus Fragasso dishing on Hooten and Buckman's mutual dislike of one another, with Buckman allegedly complaining throughout the shoot about the openly gay Hooten's sexual orientation making him an unconvincing kisser and unsuitable to play a "macho" character.
THE CHOSEN aka HOLOCAUST 2000 aka RAIN OF FIRE (Italy/UK - 1977; US release 1978) Directed by Alberto De Martino. Written by Sergio Donati, Alberto De Martino and Michael Robson. Cast: Kirk Douglas, Simon Ward, Agostina Belli, Anthony Quayle, Romolo Valli, Adolfo Celi, Virginia McKenna, Alexander Knox, Ivo Garrani, Spiros Focas, Massimo Foschi, Geoffrey Keen, Alan Hendricks, Peter Cellier, John Carlin, Penelope Horner, Caroline Horner, Vittorio Fanfoni, Teresa Rossi Passante, Andrea Esterhazy. (R, 102 mins) The Italian ripoff is one of the most enjoyably rewarding aspects of being a fan of '70s and '80s exploitation and Eurocult cinema. If there was a game-changing American blockbuster (THE GODFATHER, THE EXORCIST, JAWS, STAR WARS), an immensely popular genre effort (DAWN OF THE DEAD, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II), or even an influential film that wasn't necessarily American-made but was a worldwide hit (THE ROAD WARRIOR), it was guaranteed that at least a dozen shameless Italian ripoffs would follow in its wake. These often starred slumming, past-their-prime American and sometimes British actors who weren't getting lead roles at home and often had to resort to TV guest spots, considered at the time to be a step down. By contrast, European producers were offering starring roles, top billing, treated them like royalty, gave them an all-expenses-paid Italian vacation, and all they had to do was put in the bare minimum for the biggest paycheck, or in many cases, a suitcase full of tax-free cash. In the annals of Italian ripoffs, the 1978 OMEN knockoff THE CHOSEN stands out from the crowd, not just because it's unusually ambitious, has a much bigger budget than most of its Eurotrash imitation brethren, and a distinguished supporting cast, but because it stars a surprisingly engaged Kirk Douglas. Already a Hollywood legend by this point and not exactly hurting for work (he had Brian De Palma's THE FURY in theaters at the same time), Douglas had enough clout and his name enough value that he could've gotten away with doing as little as possible, shot his close-ups, and gone sight-seeing while his stand-in did the heavy lifting and competent editors could create the illusion that he was there the whole time, but he approaches this with all the gravitas and teeth-clenched, lock-jawed intensity of SPARTACUS.
THE CHOSEN works largely because Kirk clearly believes in it. In an era when aging leading men who stayed in Hollywood were often begrudgingly starring in glossy, big-budget horror movies that they never would've made in their heyday--Gregory Peck wasn't that enthused about being in THE OMEN, and William Holden did DAMIEN: OMEN II because he turned THE OMEN down only to see it become a huge phenomenon--Douglas passionately brings his A-game to THE CHOSEN and busts his ass like his reputation and the future of his career depended on it. We're obviously not talking Henry Fonda literally phoning in his performance from his living room in the 1977 Italian JAWS ripoff TENTACLES or Richard Harris turning up, presumably at gunpoint, in Bruno Mattei's 1988 RAMBO knockoff STRIKE COMMANDO 2, but it's always fascinating to find someone of Douglas' stature in a movie like THE CHOSEN, and usually, it's for the wrong reasons, especially in those occasional instances where they don't even stick around to dub themselves. But THE CHOSEN isn't a run-of-the-mill, quickie Italian ripoff, and perhaps Douglas recognized that. It deals with the same core ideas as THE OMEN and has some very OMEN-esque cues in Ennio Morricone's score, but also has the political and corporate plot elements that would eventually turn up in subsequent OMEN sequels as well as other Italian ripoffs like the insane THE VISITOR. It's a rare case of an Italian ripoff inadvertently influencing the later sequels to the movie it was ripping off in the first place, including a disturbing sequence in a maternity ward that foreshadows the third OMEN film, 1981's THE FINAL CONFLICT.
Douglas stars as Robert Caine, a successful London-based American industrialist whose Caine Enterprises is about to break ground on a nuclear power plant in the Middle East. The first red flag appears when Caine's wife Eva (Virginia McKenna), who opposes the construction of the plant, is killed by a fanatical protester (Massimo Foschi) in a botched assassination attempt on Caine. Then the Prime Minister (Ivo Garrani) who approved the plant is defeated in an election by military hardliner Harbin (Spiros Focas) who sternly informs Caine that his project is too dangerous and will never come to pass. One by one, everyone who opposes the construction of the plant is killed in a variety of OMEN-inspired freak accidents (including a bisection that would be copied in a much gorier fashion in DAMIEN: OMEN II, which opened two months later) as Caine, over the objections of his son Angel (Simon Ward), starts to question whether the plant should be built. A chance meeting with a priest (Romolo Valli), who may as well be named Father Exposition, leads to Caine's realization that the design and layout of the power plant is an atomic-era recreation of a Biblical prophecy of the apocalypse brought about by the Antichrist (and to further hammer it home, Father Obvious emphatically declares "The dragon of the apocalypse...is your atomic plant!"). The priest tells him that the Antichrist is a mirror image of Jesus, and with the help of Caine Enterprises chief computer programmer Griffith (Anthony Quayle), Caine discovers that a nonsense mathematical equation is really the revelation that he has "generated something that is not human." This is just before Sara (Agostina Belli), the much-younger anti-nuke journalist with whom has been having a fling, announces that she's pregnant with his child.
Directed and co-written by Alberto De Martino, best known for the blasphemous, goat-rimming 1974 Italian EXORCIST ripoff THE ANTICHRIST (belatedly released in the US in the fall of 1978 as THE TEMPTER) and whose next film was the MST3K favorite THE PUMAMAN, THE CHOSEN is endlessly entertaining despite boasting the most awkwardly-cadenced protest chant you'll ever hear ("What do our children...want to be...when they grow up...ALIVE!") and its inability to play its cards close to the vest. This makes some of Belli's performance as Sara a little baffling, since by the time she's acting strange and refusing to enter a church, we already know who the Antichrist is thanks to De Martino using no subtlety in his direction of Ward, making him look sinister from his first moment onscreen (and he's named "Angel," for Christ's sake). The screenplay has some intriguing ideas that lead to arresting images, like Caine holding a meeting of his 12-member board of directors that's staged exactly like The Last Supper. The sight of the inscription "IESVS" carved into a cave wall near the plant site and the use of the equation "2√231" to illustrate the priest's assertion that the Antichrist is a mirror image of Jesus and Griffith reminding Caine that digital numbers can form words won't fool anyone who's ever looked at the Dio logo upside-down or keyed "80085" into a calculator when they were in third grade, but like the De Martino's THE ANTICHRIST using sexual frustration as the impetus for demonic possession, THE CHOSEN is film that tries harder than it needs to and has ambitions beyond presenting a rote (yet memorable) series of splattery kill scenes.
Originally titled HOLOCAUST 2000 for its European release in late 1977, the film was rechristened THE CHOSEN when it arrived in the US in the spring of 1978 in an altered version with a different ending. The HOLOCAUST 2000 ending is more open-ended and suggests that Caine and Sara's child is the Second Coming and will battle its evil, mirror image older brother. But the cobbled-together US ending features newly-shot footage of a bearded Douglas walking through an airport, intercut with Angel vowing to complete the nuclear power plant by his 33rd birthday in a meeting with the board of directors, which he's just increased from 12 to 21 members. This goes on while an unseen figure--Caine, played by a pair of hands probably not belonging to Douglas--blows up the Caine Enterprises headquarters to ensure Angel's evil plan never comes to fruition. It isn't known whether De Martino shot this new footage commissioned by US distributor American International (ABBY and FOOD OF THE GODS editor Corky Ehlers is credited with "additional editing" in the US credits), but that was the version I remember seeing when CBS aired this in prime time in summer 1983 under its HOLOCAUST 2000 title. The film has undergone a number of title changes over the years, which hasn't been easy to keep straight given the two different versions. Despite being retitled THE CHOSEN for the US, the title reverted back to HOLOCAUST 2000 for TV and on Vestron Video's 1985-issued VHS, even though it has the CHOSEN version's "Kirk blows shit up" ending, and when it finally appeared on DVD from Lionsgate in 2008, it was retitled RAIN OF FIRE, but was the original HOLOCAUST 2000 European version without the explosion. Confused yet?
Scream Factory's new Blu-ray (because physical media is dead) contains both the HOLOCAUST 2000 and THE CHOSEN cuts, albeit in different aspect ratios (HOLOCAUST 2000 is 2.35:1, while THE CHOSEN is 1.78:1). There are minor tweaks to both versions aside from their endings (the conclusion to an early confrontation in an asylum between Caine and his wife's killer plays a bit more smoothly in the US cut), with both clocking in at 102 minutes, THE CHOSEN running a few seconds longer. Oddly, a Douglas-Belli sex scene is slightly more explicit in the US version, with some additional Belli nudity and a few extra Kirk thrusts. In a display of Douglas' absolute commitment to the project, which includes doing his own stunts like being thrown off a hospital gurney and into the air by asylum inmates while strait-jacketed, both versions showcase full-frontal Kirk in an insane dream sequence where he envisions the end of the world while running and flailing around a desert in his birthday suit. Whether it's a sense of professional dedication or just Douglas showing off his still-sterling 61-year-old physique (which he would also be happy to do in 1980's ridiculous SATURN 3, possibly influencing the future exhibitionism of co-star Harvey Keitel), his willingness to throw himself into his role helps sell the hell out of THE CHOSEN, a gem among '70s Italian genre ripoffs that deserves to be better known.
THE CHOSEN airing on CBS as HOLOCAUST 2000 on 7/30/1983
IRON WARRIOR (Italy - 1987) Directed by Al Bradley (Alfonso Brescia). Written by Steven Luotto and Al Bradley (Alfonso Brescia). Cast: Miles O'Keeffe, Savina Gersak, Elisabeth Kaza, Iris Peynado, Tim Lane, Tiziana Altieri, Frank Daddi, Josie Coppini, Malcolm Borg, Conrad Borg, Jon Rosser. (R, 87 mins) One of the countless Italian ripoffs of CONAN THE BARBARIAN, 1983's ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE helped keep Miles O'Keeffe employed following his career-killing Hollywood debut opposite Bo Derek in her husband John's 1981 fiasco TARZAN THE APE MAN. Directed by the venerable Italo sleaze king Aristide Massaccesi (aka "Joe D'Amato") under his "David Hills" pseudonym, ATOR led to the 1984 sequel THE BLADE MASTER, better known today by its MST3K incarnation CAVE DWELLERS. The third in the franchise, IRON WARRIOR, is an odd in-series reboot of sorts that almost feels like it wasn't intended to be part of the ATOR universe. Made not by Massaccesi and his Filmirage outfit but by producer Ovidio G. Assonitis (BEYOND THE DOOR, THE VISITOR, PIRANHA II: THE SPAWNING), IRON WARRIOR gives Ator a completely different origin story and puts him in decidedly different, R-rated surroundings with gore and T&A that doesn't gel with its two PG-rated predecessors. Assonitis farmed out directing duties to Alfonso Brescia as a consolation prize after removing him from 1986's CHOKE CANYON during pre-production when he decided the action-and-stunt-heavy film was too much for Brescia to handle. Better-known by his Americanized pseudonym "Al Bradley," and a perennial Italian D-lister, Brescia (1930-2001) cut his teeth on low-grade peplum (1964's THE MAGNIFICENT GLADIATOR), spaghetti westerns (1968's CRY OF DEATH) and men-on-a-mission WWII movies (1969's KILL ROMMEL!), never distinguishing himself in any conceivable way as his filmography ranked several notches below mediocre. As his career went on, he made the 1974 action comedy SUPER STOOGES VS. THE WONDER WOMEN and even managed to get Jack Palance to star in the 1976 GODFATHER knockoff BLOOD AND BULLETS, but it wasn't until his quartet of oppressively dull post-STAR WARS space operas (and the sexually explicit 1980 offshoot THE BEAST IN SPACE, which featured hardcore footage) that Brescia cemented his place in Eurocult history, even if it was for all the wrong reasons.
Shot on the same sets with most of the same supporting cast and looking like inept community theater versions of Antonio Margheriti's GAMMA 1 quartet over a decade earlier, 1977's COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS, 1978's BATTLE OF THE STARS, 1978's WAR OF THE ROBOTS, and 1979's STAR ODYSSEY are virtually interchangeable and are differentiated only by their leading men (John Richardson in the first two, followed by Antonio Sabato in ROBOTS and Gianni Garko in ODYSSEY) and rank among the ultimate feats of cine-masochistic endurance. COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS actually made it into some US theaters in 1979 but the other three went straight to syndicated TV and later surfaced on any number of public domain DVD sets, though I wouldn't be surprised if someone put them out on Blu-ray box set if the elements are able to be tracked down (nor would I be surprised when I clicked on "pre-order" when that hypothetical listing turns up on Amazon). With Scorpion's release of IRON WARRIOR, we're forced to confront what was once unthinkable: the stunning realization that an "Al Bradley" joint is on Blu-ray which, depending on your tolerance for bad movies, is either cause for celebration or the cracking of one of the seven seals that will open the gates of Hell.
IRON WARRIOR isn't exactly an expensive epic, but it's obviously got the biggest budget that the perpetually hapless Brescia was ever granted. It's his most polished and professional-looking film, shot on some stunning locales on Malta, where the production also took full advantage of some still-standing sets left over from Robert Altman's POPEYE seven years earlier. Brescia also had the added bonus of having veteran optical effects technician Wally Gentleman as a cinematographer. A real person despite his name sounding like a hastily-blurted alias, Gentleman worked on the effects crew of Assonitis' BEYOND THE DOOR and scored a visual effects gig with Francis Ford Coppola on 1982's ONE FROM THE HEART. Gentleman also worked on Douglas Trumbull's effects team for Stanley Kubrick's 1968 landmark 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, and how he went from that to serving as Alfonso Brescia's cinematographer on the third movie in the ATOR series is a story that demands to be told. Watching IRON WARRIOR in a pristine HD transfer is quite a different experience than seeing it on VHS back in the late '80s. It's less of an ATOR movie and more like a companion piece to Lucio Fulci's hallucinatory 1983 sword-and-sorcery saga CONQUEST. It's trippy and surreal, like if an Italian CONAN ripoff was directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
The script, credited to "Al Bradley" and veteran voice actor Steven Luotto (who can be heard dubbing Mark Gregory in 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS), is a hot mess of curses, hexes, and mysticism, with Brescia shamelessly stealing iconic imagery from SUPERMAN, STAR WARS, and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Believing in a prophecy that she would be destroyed by twin brothers, evil old witch Phoedra (Elisabeth Kaza) spies on eight-year-old siblings Ator and Trogar and kidnaps Trogar as part of a revenge plot against Deeva (Iris Peynado), who freed Phoedra's enslaved people. 18 years later, Phoedra summons the Iron Warrior (Frank Daddi) to kill the King (Tim Lane), who sends his princess daughter Janna (Assonitis' girlfriend Savina Gersak) away for her own safety. Deeva puts Janna in the care of lone warrior Ator (O'Keeffe), but not before he's seduced by Phoedra in the form of a nude young temptress (Tiziana Altieri). Prophesied to protect the King's daughter ("She for who you are fated needs you now!" Deeva gravely intones), Ator leads Janna on a treacherous journey where they're constantly thwarted by the supernatural shenanigans of Phoedra, who pits brother against brother as the deadly Iron Warrior is--you guessed it--the grown Trogar, whose body and soul have been taken over by the spell of Phoedra.
Or something like that. IRON WARRIOR makes absolutely no sense and there's no chemistry between O'Keeffe and Gersak, reunited from Ruggero Deodato's 1986 Indiana Jones ripoff THE LONE RUNNER (released in the US in 1988 by Trans World Entertainment, who also got IRON WARRIOR on a whopping 17 screens in January 1987), but it's so hypnotic and strange from beginning to end that it ultimately doesn't matter. It's disorienting by design, especially a scene where Ator and Janna cross a precarious suspension bridge that's genuinely dizzying to watch. It's an ATOR movie on shrooms, something that Red and Mandy would watch while eating TV dinners, and the only reason it hasn't been embraced by the stoner crowd is because they just aren't aware of it. There's enough craziness here that I'm willing to bet Assonitis--known for firing directors and finishing movies himself--had more to do with the creative direction of this than Brescia, especially when you consider the bizarre imagery in something like THE VISITOR. But for all its visual flair, it's still tough to take it seriously when Deeva's trial of Phoedra employs the same type of "Council of Elders" faces on a giant screen behind the accused, who stands there shackled by rotating hula hoops on loan from Jor-El. Or the Iron Warrior's resemblance to Darth Vader. Or a long action sequence where Ator and Janna are in a cavern being chased by giant RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK rolling boulders. O'Keeffe's catatonic performance actually enhances the hazy, stoned vibe, though he wouldn't be back for the fourth and final ATOR installment, 1990's QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD. That marked the return of Massaccesi and the introduction of a new Ator in the form of Grand Rapids, MI native Eric Allan Kramer, who presumably got the job after playing Thor in the 1988 TV-movie THE INCREDIBLE HULK RETURNS (Kramer is probably best known as Little John in Mel Brooks' ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS, and he's currently co-starring on the critically-acclaimed AMC series LODGE 49). As far as IRON WARRIOR is concerned, Scorpion's Blu-ray certainly makes the case that there's some artistic merit to it, even if the method to its madness gets lost along the way. Nevertheless, it takes a lesser-ranked place among other threequels--HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH or THE EXORCIST III, for example--that either break from established formula or serve as outliers or stealth secret weapons in their respective franchises, an ATOR: TOKYO DRIFT, if you will.
