THE SALAMANDER (UK - 1981; US release 1983) Directed by Peter Zinner. Written by Robert Katz and Rod Serling. Cast: Franco Nero, Anthony Quinn, Eli Wallach, Martin Balsam, Claudia Cardinale, Sybil Danning, Christopher Lee, Cleavon Little, Paul Smith, John Steiner, Renzo Palmer, Anita Strindberg, Jacques Herlin, Marino Mase, Fortunato Arena, John Stacy, Andre Esterhazy, Nello Pazzafini, Tom Felleghy, Gitte Lee. (R, 101 mins) Based on the 1973 novel by Morris West, the long-in-the-works conspiracy thriller THE SALAMANDER began life as a screenplay adaptation by TWILIGHT ZONE and NIGHT GALLERY creator Rod Serling, left unfinished following his death in 1975. It languished for several years until Robert Katz (THE CASSANDRA CROSSING, THE SKIN) reworked and completed it. The film finally went into production in 1980, with veteran editor Peter Zinner making his directing debut at 62, fresh off his Oscar win for editing 1978's THE DEER HUNTER. Zinner was a late-blooming hot commodity at the time, as his other credits included 1967's IN COLD BLOOD, 1972's THE GODFATHER and 1974's THE GODFATHER PART II, but he really was a hired gun at heart, as his work on THE DEER HUNTER was sandwiched between esteemed prestige projects like 1977's TINTORERA and 1979's THE FISH THAT SAVED PITTSBURGH. Shot entirely in scenic locations throughout Italy and featuring an all-star cast, THE SALAMANDER should've been a hit but was a DOA dud worldwide. It was another in a string of flops from Sir Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment, the British company that produced THE MUPPET SHOW and had some hits like THE MUPPET MOVIE, ON GOLDEN POND, and THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER, but lost a ton of money over 1980-81 on expensive bombs like the Village People's CAN'T STOP THE MUSIC, the Farrah Fawcett-pursued-by-horny-robot-in-space sci-fi dud SATURN 3, the Clive Cussler adaptation RAISE THE TITANIC!, and the ill-fated THE LEGEND OF THE LONE RANGER. ITC had distribution through various means, whether it was their own Associated Film Distribution or major studios like Universal and 20th Century Fox, but after being released in Europe in 1981, THE SALAMANDER remained unseen in the US until it turned up in one theater in NYC in May 1983 before being bum-rushed off to television and a belated VHS release in 1986. Pathfinder released it on DVD with no fanfare in 2002 but otherwise, it's spent 30 years in relative obscurity despite a cast packed with cult icons and big-screen legends and it's just been resurrected on Blu-ray courtesy of Scorpion Releasing. It's nice that it's available again and in a quality presentation, but it should come as no surprise that THE SALAMANDER isn't exactly an unsung classic waiting for its day in the sun.
The film opens in Rome with the assassination of beloved Gen. Panteleone (Fortunato Arena), a beloved statesman, WWII hero, and champion of democracy in his younger, post-war years. The truth behind his murder is buried and "natural causes" is the reason given to the public. Carabinieri officer Col. Dante Matucci (Franco Nero) is assigned to investigate, along with his big brotherly mentor Capt. Stefanelli (Martin Balsam). Both are stonewalled by everyone, from Panteleone's heir apparent Gen. Leporello (Eli Wallach) to Italy's counterintelligence chief Prince Baldasar (Christopher Lee), and the body count rises as anyone Matucci questions or is about to question turns up dead. After tying Panteleone's death to a decades-long string of assassinations of war criminals staged to look like suicides--pulled off by a hit man known as "The Salamander," the long-retired alter ego of billionaire industrialist Bruno Manzini (Anthony Quinn)--Matucci uncovers a plot to orchestrate a coup d'etat by a renegade group of military officials and high-powered politicos attempting a Make Italy Great Again move by taking the country back to the Mussolini glory days.
Matucci's investigation also involves a momentum-killing romance with Polish spy Lili Anders (Sybil Danning, who had just co-starred with Nero in Enzo G. Castellari's THE DAY OF THE COBRA), some ballbusting with his NATO-based USMC buddy Malinowski (Cleavon Little), and a sadistic and profusely sweaty torturer known as "The Surgeon" (Paul Smith, doing his usual MIDNIGHT EXPRESS stink-eye side-glancing act). Even with the cast and the potentially intriguing story, THE SALAMANDER just never catches fire despite the heroic efforts of a typically excellent score by Jerry Goldsmith that belongs in a more exciting movie. It gets bogged down in sequence after sequence of Matucci going to see someone, interviewing them, and then moving on to the next person. Zinner offers one low-energy car chase in which both cars crash through oddly-placed fruit stands right on cue. Intermittently-deployed voiceover narration by Nero is a clear indication of Zinner scrambling to cover gaps in the narrative, and most of the big names--Quinn, Lee, Little, Wallach, Claudia Cardinale (as Leporello's wife)--have little more than extended cameos. Balsam has one great bit where the camera slowly moves in on his aging face as he delivers a devastating monologue about how he, as a young man during WWII, stepped out for cigars and returned home to find his entire family massacred, but then Zinner ruins it, breaking the spell by inexplicably cutting to a reaction shot from a cat. There's a little oomph offered by some third-act sleaze, with Mrs. Leporello having a torrid affair with her husband's aide-de-camp Roditi (John Steiner, dubbed by Larry Dolgin) and the discovery that Gen. Leporello has a thing for very young girls, plus some unintended hilarity with a torture scene leading to a Franco Nero/Paul Smith brawl, with a hirsute Nero sporting nothing but a jockstrap with his bare ass flailing all over the place and nearly giving Smith a faceful of his taint. THE SALAMANDER is an interesting curio if for no other reason than that cast, all of whom are fine and do what's expected of them (Lee's smug, sinister Baldasur allows him to pull out almost every move in his "pompous prick" arsenal), but it proved to be one-and-done for Zinner as a director. After the film's failure, he returned to his regular job, earning an Oscar nomination for editing 1982's AN OFFICER AND A GENTLEMAN and several Emmy nominations for various TV gigs, including the epic 1983 ABC miniseries THE WINDS OF WAR and its 1988 sequel WAR AND REMEMBRANCE, winning for the latter. Zinner died in 2007 at 88.
JUNGLE WARRIORS (West Germany/Mexico - 1984) Directed by Ernst R. von Theumer. Written by Robert Collector and Ernst R. von Theumer. Cast: Nina Van Pallandt, Paul L. Smith, John Vernon, Alex Cord, Sybil Danning, Marjoe Gortner, Woody Strode, Dana Elcar, Kai Wulff, Louisa Moritz, Suzi Horne, Mindy Iden, Kari Lloyd, Ava Cadell, Myra Chason, Angela Robinson, Isabel "Chichimeca" Vazquez. (R, 95 mins) From the producers of 1983's legendary women-in-prison masterpiece CHAINED HEAT comes this similarly sleazy actioner packed with slumming big names, including returning co-stars John Vernon, Sybil Danning, and Louisa Moritz. The ludicrous plot involves a group of fashion models managed by coke-snorting asshole Larry (Marjoe Gortner) heading to a shoot in the Amazon and getting caught in the middle of a war between South American drug lord Cesar Santiago (Paul L. Smith) and gregarious mob kingpin Vittorio Mastranga (Vernon). Mastranga and a few of his goons, including his nephew/lawyer Nick Spilotro (Alex Cord), are trying to muscle in on Santiago's turf, but things get complicated when Santiago shoots down the models' plane and takes them prisoner. Of course, this leads to an extended and distasteful sequence where Santiago's slobbering underlings take turns raping all of the women before they revolt--one of them (Mindi Iden) is actually an undercover FBI agent, which begs the question "What would the point of her going undercover as a model be if the plane didn't get shot down?"--and become the titular ass-kickers. JUNGLE WARRIORS also provides ample space for Vernon to overact and for Smith to do his patented glowering stink-eye routine, but there's also some additional trashy enjoyment to be had from Cesar's obviously incestuous relationship with his sultry, psycho-bitch sister Angel (Danning), who instigates the models' gang rape and gets a nude oil rubdown from her brother, though the lighting of the scene suggests neither Danning nor Smith were directly involved with it.
Greatest grindhouse group shot ever?
You also get Woody Strode as Luther, Santiago's top henchman, top-billed Nina Van Pallandt (a former model and one-time Robert Altman muse) as Joanna, the producer of the photo shoot, German actor Kai Wulff as a pilot and brief love interest for Joanna, and Dana Elcar (MACGYVER) as irate FBI agent D'Antoni, who seems to exist in another movie altogether (Elcar shares no scenes with any other main cast members and is always shown stewing and yelling in an office). The primary reason anyone remembers JUNGLE WARRIORS today is because of who wasn't in it: Dennis Hopper was originally set to co-star when the film went into production in early 1983, and he arrived at the remote Mexican location with his legendary drug and alcohol problems at their apex, working for a couple of days before fleeing the set when he was convinced people were trying to kill him. He was discovered in a small village 20 miles away, where he was picked up by local police after stripping nude and wandering around in a daze shouting "Kill me naked!" He was fired and put on the first flight to Los Angeles, where he had to be restrained when he tried to open the plane's emergency exit. Hopper would tell this story many times over the years, and the details only came from those who witnessed it--he had no memories of being in Mexico or even working on the movie before his dismissal. After years of escalating and ultimately out-of-control alcoholism (he was drinking over a case of beer and a nearly a gallon of rum a day) and substance abuse ("I'd do a few grams of coke to sober up"), Hopper hit bottom with his JUNGLE WARRIORS meltdown, and it proved to be the wake-up call that got him into rehab upon his return home, after which he remained clean and sober and within a few years, rebuilt his career with his triumphant comeback that began in 1986 with BLUE VELVET and an Oscar-nominated supporting turn in HOOSIERS. The common belief is that Hopper was cast as Larry and replaced by Gortner, which makes sense given some of Larry's behavior and Gortner's very Hopper-like performance. But an early trade ad in Variety that ran when the film started production (thanks to Video Junkie's William Wilson for that bit of history seen below) shows that both Hopper and Gortner were in the cast. That same trade ad makes no mention of Kai Wulff, so it's possible--and this is pure hypothesis on my part--that Hopper was cast as Larry and Gortner as the pilot/Joanna love interest, and when Hopper was canned, Gortner was shifted over to the more showy Larry role. It doesn't seem likely that Hopper would've played the heroic love interest to the main heroine, and since both Larry and the pilot are killed off before the midpoint (Larry by booby-trap impalement, the pilot by one of the least-convincing decapitations ever), Gortner wouldn't have had to stick around any longer in order to play Larry instead.
"and Marjoe Gortner as Larry"
Distributed in the US by 42nd Street mainstay Terry Levene's Aquarius Releasing in November 1984, JUNGLE WARRIORS is a mostly crummy grindhouse affair that's prime guilty pleasure material thanks to the bewildered-looking cast and some splattery shootouts, not to mention one killing involving the rotor blades of a chopper that probably sounded better in concept that it plays in execution. And you really haven't lived until you've experienced Marina Arcangeli's incredible JUNGLE WARRIORS theme, quite possibly the worst song ever recorded. In addition to the headaches involving Hopper, the film also switched directors early in the shoot, with veteran German producer Ernst R. von Theumer giving Billy Fine the axe and taking over direction himself. Fine was also a producer on CHAINED HEAT and 1982's THE CONCRETE JUNGLE, and JUNGLE WARRIORS was set to be his debut behind the camera. Von Theumer had been a journeyman in German B-movies going back to the late 1950s (he also directed the 1972 Roger Corman pick-up THE BIG BUST-OUT under the pseudonym "Richard Jackson") and carved a brief niche for himself in the 1980s women-in-prison/jungle action explosion: he would later produce and co-write (and do some uncredited directing) on 1985's RED HEAT, a CHAINED HEAT semi-sequel that reunited Danning and Linda Blair, and he'd direct 1986's HELL HUNTERS, a typically sleazy jungle exploitationer that brought together the seen-better-days likes of Maud Adams, George Lazenby, William Berger, and Stewart Granger as a former Nazi hiding in Paraguay and working on a spider venom-based mind control drug.
Directed by Paul Nicolas. Written by Vincent Mongol and Paul Nicolas. Cast: Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, Stella Stevens, Henry Silva, Sharon Hughes, Kendall Kaldwell, Robert Miano, Dee Biederbeck, Greta Blackburn, Nita Talbot, Louisa Moritz, Jennifer Ashley, Jody Medford, Mae Campbell, Monique Gabrielle, Edy Williams, Marcia Karr, Carol White, Susan Meschner, Michael Callan, Leila Chrystie, Martha Gallub, Aaron Butler, Irwin Keyes. (R, 98 mins)
The women-in-prison (WIP) genre existed as far back as the 1930s but with the dawn of a new era and the freedoms allowed by an R rating, it blew up as an exploitation staple in the early 1970s thanks to Roger Corman producing a string of sleazy gems for his New World Pictures like THE BIG DOLL HOUSE (1971), WOMEN IN CAGES (1971), THE BIG BIRD CAGE (1972), BLACK MAMA, WHITE MAMA (1973), and Jonathan Demme's directorial debut CAGED HEAT (1974). The ever-reliable Jess Franco really kicked things off with 1969's 99 WOMEN, but the popularity of Corman's New World releases begat European imitations like THE BIG BUST OUT (1973) and Jess Franco's ILSA, THE WICKED WARDEN. With their hammy acting, gratuitous nudity, prison-yard catfights, lecherous guards, sadistic wardens, and mandatory lesbian shower seductions, these became fixtures in drive-ins and grindhouses for the rest of the decade before winding up in regular rotation on late-night cable in the early '80s, which is also when the Australian soap PRISONER: CELL BLOCK H started running in syndication on American television. A second wave of WIP films took off with THE CONCRETE JUNGLE (1982), and led to HELLHOLE (1985), THE NAKED CAGE (1986), and the spoofy REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS (1986), along with the requisite Italian knockoffs like CAGED WOMEN (1982, released in the US in 1984), and the utterly bonkers WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (1983, US release 1985), with the focus almost entirely on the exploitative elements and lacking even the cursory allusions to social commentary that existed in some of the more ambitious Corman productions. The '80s WIP films enjoyed much popularity on video store shelves and on cable, but there was one film from this second wave that has managed to tower over its contemporaries and is largely considered the ultimate WIP epic: CHAINED HEAT, released in theaters May 27, 1983.
Producer Billy Fine brought a lot of the ladies from THE CONCRETE JUNGLE back for CHAINED HEAT, but while that film's slumming big-name value was limited to Jill St. John as the bitchy warden, CHAINED HEAT boasted a ridiculous cast of actors either in a career lull or on their way down, almost all of them well aware of what kind of movie they're in and just rolling with it. Journeyman types like John Vernon and Henry Silva were still regularly appearing an A-list fare, but never turned down a gig if the pay was right, especially, in Vernon's case, if most of your screen time was spent in a hot tub filming and fooling around with topless co-stars. Yes, CHAINED HEAT is the infamous "the warden has a jacuzzi in his office" movie, and judging from his over-the-top performance, I'm confident Vernon at no point mistook this for a serious project. Sure, he'd worked with the likes of John Boorman, Lee Marvin, Alfred Hitchcock, Clint Eastwood, and Dusan Makavejev in the past, and cemented his place in comedy history as Dean Wormer in ANIMAL HOUSE (1978), but when you get a chance to spend almost the entire movie surrounded by naked women and sinking your teeth into dialogue like "Don't call me Warden...call me Fellini!" then you don't pass it up.
In what was publicized at the time as her first "grown-up" role, Oscar-nominated EXORCIST star Linda Blair, her career already bogged down by bad movies, hard partying, and a late '70s drug bust, is naïve "prison virgin" Carol Henderson, sentenced to 18 months for accidental vehicular manslaughter. The terrified Carol isn't sure where to turn or who to trust, and finds herself in the middle of a prison turf war between rival gangs led by Ericka (Sybil Danning) and Duchess (Tamara Dobson). Also not helping matters is sleazy warden Bacman (Vernon), who entertains the sexier inmates in his hot tub and keeps them supplied with heroin from his side business, which is being cut in on by his chief guard Capt. Taylor (Stella Stevens) and her slimy pimp boyfriend Lester (Silva), who are running their own drug smuggling operation on the inside with Ericka. After Ericka kills his snitch Debbie (Monique Gabrielle), Bacman tries to talk Carol into replacing her as his eyes and ears and she trusts Bacman until he rapes her in a drugged rage. Eventually, Ericka and Duchess set aside their differences and unite to fight the oppressive rule of the sadistic Taylor and her crew of guards, who frequently abuse and sexually assault the inmates. Taylor is also preoccupied with getting the venal Bacman out of the picture so she and Lester can run both the prison and the drug trade within.
"Mr. Silva's wardrobe provided by Henry Silva"
With the plot stripped down to its basics, CHAINED HEAT sounds like any other WiP flick of its era. But where this stands out from the crowd is its cast, their bug-eyed histrionics, and the rampant trashiness of the entire project. Even Blair engages in some much-ballyhooed topless shots, including a lathering up by Danning in the shower. Bacman's private hot tub is a constant source of amusement. Stevens' late-film outburst of "Slimy pig shit!" while beating Danning has to be seen to believed. Silva is a blast as the Cosby sweater-sporting pimp, who's always hanging out at the prison but it's never really clear what his job is (is he some sort of supplies delivery person?), other than sneaking some of the girls out of prison to pimp them out to rich gangsters like the one played by busy TV actor Michael Callan, 1961's Golden Globe winner for Most Promising Newcomer. The imposing Dobson spends the entire film in a pained, jaw-clenched grimace, and her confrontation with Danning is one for the ages. And remember: "No Spitting."
The German-produced CHAINED HEAT was shot in Los Angeles at the shuttered Lincoln Heights Jail, which closed in 1965 but frequently functioned as a location for film shoots (it can also be seen in CAGED HEAT and Jamaa Fanaka's 1979 hit PENITENTIARY, and the Freddy Krueger boiler room sequences in 1984's A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET were also shot there). The film was directed by Paul Nicolas, a pseudonym for German writer/director Lutz Schaarwachter, a minor-league exploitation vet whose credits included scripting the softcore, young Nastassja Kinski late-night cable favorite BOARDING SCHOOL (1978) and directing Danning in the "disturbed teenage daughter has the hots for her dad and tries to kill her stepmother" erotic thriller JULIE DARLING (1983). The very sporadic Schaarwachter/"Nicolas" would return to the WIP genre with THE NAKED CAGE for Cannon, and he's only made two films since then, the most recent being the 2000 Vegas-set drama LUCKYTOWN, with Kirsten Dunst and James Caan. Nicolas never really became a prominent B-movie figure, but CHAINED HEAT is enough to ensure his bona fides as an exploitation legend. Let's face it: no matter how many forgettable-to-shitty movies you may have directed, helming CHAINED HEAT gets you a lifetime pass.
CHAINED HEAT opened on Memorial Day weekend in 1983 and landed in 7th place at the box office--not a bad finish considering the only other wide release that weekend was RETURN OF THE JEDI (Video Junkie's William Wilson on CHAINED HEAT: "Only one movie had the balls to open up against RETURN OF THE JEDI!"). Budgeted at just $1 million, it stayed in the top ten for two weeks and grossed a little over $6 million--not a blockbuster by most standards, but it made a huge profit for the producers and for small-time distributor Jensen-Farley Pictures before it hit video stores courtesy of the legendary Vestron Video, a company whose logo preceded many great exploitation films of the '70s and '80s and seems to perfectly epitomize the 1980s video store experience. The full-frame 1.33 VHS transfer of CHAINED HEAT inadvertently added to its cult status as a Bad Movie classic: it was improperly framed from the 1.78 theatrical image, leaving the top of the frame visible, leading to the unsteady boom mic being in the film nearly as much as Linda Blair. For years, people who missed CHAINED HEAT theatrically were under the impression that the film was simply shot this incompetently. When viewed in its proper widescreen aspect ratio, the boom mic is never seen.
CHAINED HEAT still gets shown in semi-regular rotation on Showtime and Flix's late-night schedule, but avoid that version at all costs, as it's misframed (black bars slapped on a 1.33 image to create the illusion of letterboxing, causing the tops of heads to be awkwardly cut out of the frame) and missing about 12 minutes of footage, including Vernon's death scene and most of the footage involving Edy Williams' nympho inmate. In 2011, Panik House released the complete CHAINED HEAT in a impressive anamorphic transfer as part of a triple feature Women in Prison set, along with 1984's JUNGLE WARRIORS (from the same producers and also featuring Vernon and Danning) and 1985's RED HEAT, "presented" by cinema nudity expert Mr. Skin. RED HEAT was sold as a semi-sequel of sorts, again with Blair as a naïve innocent thrown into a cruel prison, this time in East Germany. It's a very grim film that focuses more on brutality, and while it's unusually serious for the genre, it's ugly, downbeat, and not much fun at all. CHAINED HEAT did spawn two in-name-only, Czech Republic-shot straight-to-video sequels: CHAINED HEAT 2 (1993), with Brigitte Nielsen, and the post-apocalyptic sci-fi outing CHAINED HEAT 3: HELL MOUNTAIN (1998), with Jack Scalia and Sarah Douglas. Neither of these films have anything to do with the iconic original. An additional sequel of sorts came from CHAINED HEAT 2 director Lloyd Simandl, whose RAGE OF THE INNOCENTS (2001) was released in the UK as CHAINED HEAT 2001: SLAVE LOVERS.
CHAINED HEAT didn't really do anything to boost anyone's career, be they a young starlet or a check-cashing veteran, though on the DVD's accompanying documentary, Danning (who's introduced the film at some midnight screenings in recent years) has a great sense of humor about it, while Stevens, whose career had certainly seen better days (like 1963's THE NUTTY PROFESSOR), seems to have taken it very seriously. To the surprise of no one, the film got almost unanimously negative reviews from critics, and Danning was rewarded with a Razzie for Worst Supporting Actress for both this and the Lou Ferrigno version of HERCULES, which would open at the end of the summer of 1983, a busy one for the actress that also saw her on the cover of the August 1983 issue of Playboy.
What hype CHAINED HEAT did receive at the time was centered on Blair, and the film did nothing to further her cause of tackling serious adult roles. She was back playing a high school student-turned-vigilante in 1984's SAVAGE STREETS, which co-starred Vernon (who was really slumming in the grindhouse during this period, between the films mentioned here as well as 1983's CURTAINS) and gave the veteran actor one of the most nonsensically quotable lines of his career. Blair stayed busy in the world of straight-to-video for the rest of the 1980s and through the 1990s, even spoofing THE EXORCIST by teaming up with Leslie Nielsen for the dismal 1990 comedy REPOSSESSED, as well as a cameo in Wes Craven's 1996 blockbuster SCREAM. Now 54, Blair acts infrequently (she recently finished shooting an indie comedy called WHOA! and it was her first acting gig in five years), is a regular guest at fan conventions and a prominent PETA and Feed the Children activist and spends most of her time focusing on animal rescue work with The Linda Blair WorldHeart Foundation.
As far as bad movies go, CHAINED HEAT is a gift that never stops giving. From the lewd and crude plot to the hilarious dialogue to Henry Silva rockin' a pimp sweater like no one before or since, CHAINED HEAT is not only the last word in Women in Prison flicks, it's also an essential grindhouse exploitation classic of the early 1980s glory days when something this phenomenally trashy could actually open nationwide on a holiday weekend. They just don't make 'em like this anymore.
Written and directed by Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi). Cast: Lou Ferrigno, Sybil Danning, Brad Harris, William Berger, Rossana Podesta, Ingrid Anderson, Mirella D'Angelo, Bobby Rhodes, John Garko (Gianni Garko), Yehuda Efroni, Delia Boccardo, Claudio Cassinelli, Frank Garland (Franco Garofalo), Gabriella George (Gabriella Giogelli), Steven Candell (Stelio Candelli), Eva Robbins, Roger Larry (Rocco Lerro). (PG, 99 mins)
When THE INCREDIBLE HULK ended its five-season run on CBS in 1982, two-time Mr. Universe Lou Ferrigno wanted to achieve the big-screen success that his PUMPING IRON rival Arnold Schwarzenegger was enjoying with the hit film CONAN THE BARBARIAN. The opportunity presented itself when he was approached by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus about several projects for Cannon, including a new version of HERCULES. It was a dream come true for Ferrigno, who got into a bodybuilding during his teen years as a way of building his self-confidence and to combat bullying after an early childhood ear infection caused him to lose 80% of his hearing. Ferrigno discovered what would become one of his biggest inspirations when his father took eight-year-old Lou to see Steve Reeves in HERCULES in 1959, so he couldn't turn down the chance to make his own mark with a remake of a film that was such a milestone in his life.
Perhaps wanting a more traditional "Hercules" feel (but probably doing the math and realizing it would be cheaper to do it this way), Golan and Globus farmed HERCULES out to their Italian branch, which was being run by John Thompson, now an executive with Avi Lerner's Cannon cover band Millennium/NuImage. According to a 1992 Starlog interview with co-star Sybil Danning, the original script for HERCULES was filled with generous amounts of violence and sex, much like the very R-rated CONAN THE BARBARIAN. But as the project was near and dear to Ferrigno's heart and he likely didn't want to risk turning away the younger fan base he amassed from THE INCREDIBLE HULK, he and his wife Carla instituted some changes to make the film much more PG-ready and kid-friendly. What resulted was a bizarre collection of vignettes with a distinct sci-fi edge, with the retooled script liberally borrowing more from STAR WARS, SUPERMAN, and CLASH OF THE TITANS than it did from CONAN (Danning referred to the completed film as "a bad episode of FAERIE TALE THEATER"). Former Dario Argento associate Luigi Cozzi (using his regular pseudonym "Lewis Coates"), who had a minor drive-in hit with 1979's STAR WARS ripoff STARCRASH, was hired to write and direct the film and brought with him STARCRASH special effects designer Armando Valcauda, whose stop-motion animation and time-lapse photography techniques were antiquated at best, and laughable at worst, even more so coming at the end of a summer ruled by RETURN OF THE JEDI. So what began as a full-blooded sword-and-sandal saga for grown-ups turned into a cheap-looking, childish sci-fi adventure whose pitiful visual effects and cheesy dubbing (even Ferrigno, his natural voice affected by his hearing loss, would be dubbed by someone else in all of his Italian-made Cannon productions) got it laughed off multiplex screens nationwide when it opened in US theaters in late August 1983. Instead of Schwarzenegger-sized stardom, Ferrigno and the film were rewarded with a slew of Razzie nominations, including Worst Film, Worst Screenplay, and Worst Actor, with Danning winning Worst Supporting Actress (shared for this and her work in CHAINED HEAT) and Lou being named Worst New Star over such competition as Reb Brown in YOR: THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE and Cindy & Sandy, the Shrieking Dolphins in JAWS 3-D.
Good luck following the plot: on the moon, Zeus (Claudio Cassinelli) hurls a ball of light to Earth below and it enters the body of a newborn child of royal lineage who becomes baby Hercules. Then Hercules' parents are killed at the behest of the wicked King Minos (William Berger) and his scheming daughter Adriana (Danning), who orders flunky centurion Valcheus (Gianni Garko) to kill the child. When Hercules is sent floating down the river in a basket, a soldier is about to shoot an arrow at him when the idiotic Valcheus instructs him to just let him go, that "the river will take care of him for us." Hercules is then found and raised by childless couple Ma & Pa Kent...er, I mean, Father and Mother (Stelio Candelli, Gabriella Giorgelli). Years later, the grown Hercules finds his father being killed by a wild bear, which Hercules promptly hurls into space, creating a new constellation. When his mother is killed by a flying robot sent to Earth by King Minos, Hercules decides to forge his own path on his way to exacting vengeance on Minos and finding love with Cassiopea (Ingrid Anderson), daughter of the honorable King Augeias (Brad Harris, himself a former 1960s Hercules and another inspiration to Ferrigno), and briefly being turned into a giant by Circe (Mirella D'Angelo). This all leads to a showdown on a narrow catwalk over a bottomless pit with King Minos, who swings a multi-colored laser-y flaming sword that strongly resembles a light saber in a sequence that in no way is meant to look anything like a certain memorable part of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. Hercules then defeats Minos by pulling a sword from a golden stone ("This sword consecrated to Zeus fears nothing!"), but it's in no way meant to remind you of EXCALIBUR.
HERCULES is just dreadful, from the lousy special effects to the copious amounts of stock footage from other sword & sandal epics that were at least 20 years old with completely mismatched film stock. Sure, there's some Bad Movie Night value, but it doesn't really get goofy until the climax. Until then, it's deadly dull despite a committed physical performance by Ferrigno, whose as effective-looking a Hercules as his idol Steve Reeves.
THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS (Italy - 1984)
Directed by Bruno Mattei. Written by Claude Fragass (Claudio Fragasso). Cast: Lou Ferrigno, Sybil Danning, Brad Harris, Dan Vadis, Carla Ferrigno, Barbara Pesante, Yehuda Efroni, Mandy Rice-Davies, Robert Mura, Ivan Beshears (Emilio Messina), Jody Wanger (Giovanni Cianfriglia), Michael Franz (Sal Borghese), Gary Levine (Raul Cabrera). (PG, 86 mins)
When HERCULES was released in theaters at the end of the summer of 1983, it was supposed to be Ferrigno staking his claim to Schwarzenegger-level big-screen fame. When that didn't exactly pan out, his subsequent Cannon films didn't get nearly the same rollout as HERCULES. THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS made it into a handful of US theaters exactly a year later in August of 1984, but it was shot before HERCULES, which Cannon and Ferrigno clearly deemed the more important picture in their new partnership. A CONAN-inspired remake of both Akira Kurosawa's SEVEN SAMURAI (1954) and its own remake THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN (1960), THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS is surprisingly straight-faced and competently-made, considering it's directed by veteran Italian schlock king Bruno Mattei and written by future TROLL 2 director Claudio Fragasso. Mattei and Fragasso worked together throughout the '80s on such revered trash classics as HELL OF THE LIVING DEAD (1980), WOMEN'S PRISON MASSACRE (1983), RATS: NIGHT OF TERROR (1984) and the legendary STRIKE COMMANDO (1987), and its 1988 sequel, just to name a few, but THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS finds the dynamic duo in rare, restrained form, even making effective use of mostly outdoor locations. Even 1983 Cannon was big-time for these two, so maybe the additional money and answering to Golan & Globus helped them buckle down and stay focused (it also helps that the film necessitates relatively little in the way of inevitably hilarious visual effects), but I'll be damned if Mattei and Fragasso didn't turn in a generally serious and thoroughly watchable film not aimed for the kiddie crowd. Cheap and cheesy, yes...but surprisingly okay, very respectful of its sources, and other than the villain's clothing, not demonstrating much at all in the way of unintentional laughter.
The premise should be familiar to anyone who's seen the older films. Sadistic despot Nicerote (Dan Vadis) raids a village yearly to steal their food. Unable to defend themselves, the citizens, ruled by Nicerote's blind mother Anakora (Barbara Pesante), use a magical sword to guide them to the chosen one who will come to their aid. That turns out to be enslaved gladiator Han (Ferrigno), who brings along aging buddy Scipio (Brad Harris), and the two recruit five more magnificent gladiators along the way, including Julia (Sybil Danning). Ferrigno, Danning, and Harris would also go on to star in HERCULES, though Harris didn't have much to do. Oddly, it's Scipio who gets romantically involved with Julia, while Han only has eyes for village maiden Pandora, which isn't all that surprising when you consider that she's played by Ferrigno's wife Carla. Danning has said in interviews that she and Ferrigno didn't get along very well on either of these films, which may have resulted in her getting a different--and smaller--role in HERCULES than was originally intended. And that's a shame, because she's perfectly cast, even if she's dubbed by Pat Starke, who's here along with most of the golden era Italian dubbing icons.
Dan Vadis (1938-1987)
Vadis, himself a former Hercules and peplum regular in the '60s who had fallen on hard times by the '80s, is suitably hateful is the evil Nicerote. With the '60s muscleman craze finished, Vadis was acting infrequently in the early 1970s until Clint Eastwood started giving him small roles in some of his films (Vadis appeared in 1973's HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, 1977's THE GAUNTLET, 1978's EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE, and 1980's BRONCO BILLY and ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN), but the troubled actor was already losing a battle with alcohol and drugs. He was no longer in bodybuilding shape and was rather thin and gaunt-looking by 1983, and wasn't getting much help from his character's ludicrous wardrobe. As was the case with Harris (who also guest-starred on a final-season INCREDIBLE HULK episode), Ferrigno was a big fan of Vadis' old movies in his youth and probably pulled some strings to get him the part. THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS proved to be Vadis' last film: he died of a drug overdose at just 49 in 1987, his body found in his car in the Mojave Desert town of Lancaster, CA.
THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES aka HERCULES II (Italy - 1985)
Written and directed by Lewis Coates (Luigi Cozzi). Cast: Lou Ferrigno, Milly Carlucci, Sonia Viviani, William Berger, Carlotta Green (Carla Ferrigno), Claudio Cassinelli, Nando Poggi, Maria Rosaria Omaggio, Venantino Venantini, Laura Lenzi, Margi Newton, Cindy Leadbetter, Serena Grandi, Eva Robbins. (PG, 88 mins)
Operating under the utterly false assumption that audiences were demanding a sequel to HERCULES, Ferrigno and Cozzi reunited for 1985's THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES, released in some parts of the world as HERCULES II. Golan and Globus didn't even put their names on this one, and it doesn't look like they put much money into it, either. With an even more paltry budget than the first go-around, Cozzi relies on quite a bit of recycled footage from the first film (not to mention using the same Pino Donaggio score), so much so in the early going (the eight-minute, whoosh-filled SUPERMAN-inspired opening credits sequence contains highlights from the first film) that it's 17 minutes in before we get a new shot of Ferrigno, and you can tell when Cozzi's using stock footage from the 1983 film because in the new footage, Ferrigno's hair is cut shorter and he isn't nearly as bulky--his shoulders and neck aren't quite as huge and his chest is noticeably smaller. Cozzi's script is just as incoherent as the first: four rebel gods have stolen the seven thunderbolts of Zeus (Claudio Cassinelli), who calls on Hercules (Ferrigno) to recover them and stop the evil and chaos unleashed by their theft. Hercules teams up with two adoptive sisters, Urania (Milly Carlucci) and Glaucia (Sonia Viviani) to help him in his quest. The four rebel gods: Hera (Maria Rosaria Omaggio), Flora (Laura Lenzi), Aphrodite (Margi Newton), and Poseidon (Nando Poggi) resurrect the dead King Minos (William Berger), who is given a protective shield of "cunning, connivance, and chaos" by his snarky sidekick Daedalus (Eva Robbins). Hercules battles various types of weird creatures and is kidnapped by the Spider Queen and imprisoned in her magnetic web before escaping for his final battle with King Minos.
Here's where Cozzi just loses control of the film and lets things go completely bonkers. Just as Hercules and Minos face off--it's important to note that it's bulky 1983 Ferrigno at the beginning of this sequence--there's a couple of odd closeups of a grinning Berger before Minos and Hercules both turn into neon animated figures and begin dueling. Yes...Cozzi and his effects team simply used cheap rotoscoping effects over Hercules and Minos' climactic battle in the 1983 film to present it in a weird neon animated form and pass it off as a new confrontation. But that ends quickly as the animated Minos turns himself into a T-Rex and the animated Hercules becomes a giant gorilla and they start wrestling. The T-Rex Minos then turns into a giant snake and is hurled into space by Gorilla Hercules.
But Cozzi's cut-rate hackery doesn't end there! Cozzi recycles footage from the 1983 film where Circe turned Hercules into a giant, as Zeus calls upon him to "save mankind!" (cue destruction footage from the 1960 Steve Reeves version of THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII) and proceeds to awkwardly construct a climax around inferior-looking, unused workprint footage of Ferrigno from the first film. In other words, the last 20 minutes of THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES consist of two climactic action sequences that were assembled completely without Ferrigno's participation. Cozzi managed to have a Hercules/King Minos showdown with neither Ferrigno nor Berger anywhere near the set. I would've liked to have been in the room when someone said "Hey, a rotoscoped T-Rex and a gorilla! We can do this!"
Considering that Ferrigno isn't really even in the first or last 20 minutes, it's probably a safe bet that they didn't have him for very long or, given the universally negative reception the 1983 film got, maybe he just wasn't all that into it this time. It's hard to believe anyone wanted a sequel to such a dismal film, but it must've been a hit somewhere. In an odd way, THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES is more entertaining than HERCULES, largely because of the batshit looney tunes climax. It's not quite as STAR WARS-influenced as the first film and some of the sets have a more traditional peplum look to them. Cannon didn't give this one the nationwide rollout that HERCULES was granted, only dumping it in a handful of theaters before it appeared on video store shelves and on cable.
SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (Italy - 1990)
Directed by Enzo G. Castellari. Written by Tito Carpi, Enzo G. Castellari, and Ian Danby. Cast: Lou Ferrigno, John Steiner, Roland Wybenga, Cork Hubbert, Enio Girolami, Haruhiko Yamanouchi, Yehuda Efroni, Alessandra Martines, Teagan, Leo Gullotta, Stefania Girolami, Donal Hodson, Melonee Rodgers, Romano Puppo, Daria Nicolodi, Giada Cozzi, Ted Rusoff. (PG-13, 93 mins)
Luigi Cozzi had a script ready for SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS, which was set to be shot as a miniseries for Italian television right after HERCULES but Cozzi and Ferrigno ended up doing THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES instead. After that, Cannon relieved Cozzi of his duties and turned SINBAD over to veteran journeyman Enzo G. Castellari (STREET LAW, 1990: THE BRONX WARRIORS), who rewrote Cozzi's script with frequent collaborator Tito Carpi (with additional rewriting by dubbing veteran Ian Danby), with Cozzi retaining a "Story by" credit under his "Lewis Coates" pseudonym. SINBAD was shot in 1986 and, according to an interview with Cozzi, Castellari had six hours of raw footage that Cannon deemed unusable and the entire project was shelved. Three years later, in an attempt to salvage something of the wreckage, a struggling Cannon rehired Cozzi to take the Castellari footage and construct a 90-minute feature out of it, which obviously explains the disjointed nature of the resulting film, released straight-to-video in late 1990. An attempt was also made to haphazardly tie it into a brief and mostly botched Edgar Allan Poe revival that was taking place (over 1988-1991, there were two new versions of THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH, plus THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA, THE HOUSE OF USHER, BURIED ALIVE, and Cozzi's own THE BLACK CAT, plus the George A. Romero/Dario Argento collaboration TWO EVIL EYES) by adding a pre-credits crawl claiming the film was based on Poe's short story "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade." Cozzi shot new wraparound sequences with Daria Nicolodi as a mom reading a bedtime story to her daughter (Cozzi's daughter Giada), with extensive voiceover narration valiantly attempting to hold things together. As in THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES, stock footage was utilized to tie up further loose ends (including snippets from two older Ray Harryhausen SINBAD films and even Argento's PHENOMENA), with one amazing shot of Ferrigno's clean-shaven Sinbad about to dive in the water followed by a cut to stock footage from HERCULES of a fully-bearded Ferrigno swimming. Sloppily assembled and with no oversight at all (at one point, courtesy of some careless or desperate editing, Romano Puppo's character is in two places at once), it's a miracle that Cozzi was even able to assemble anything, considering the apparent mess left by Castellari, who's got a number of beloved genre films to his name (including the original 1978 cult classic INGLORIOUS BASTARDS) but was having a really off-day with SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS.
The resulting film understandably feels made up as it goes along, with Ferrigno's heroic Sinbad on a quest to defeat evil wizard Jaffar (John Steiner), who casts a spell over the Caliph of Basra (Donal Hodson) in an attempt to steal his princess daughter (Alessandra Martines) from Prince Ali (Roland Wybenga). Sinbad faces all manner of danger, from zombie knights to styrofoam rock monsters to a wicked sorceress (Melonee Rodgers) and is aided by his faithful companions: Ali, along with the "Viking warrior" (Enio Girolami), Poochie the Dwarf (Cork Hubbert), "the bald cook" (Yehuda Efroni), and "the Chinese soldier of fortune" (played by Japanese Haruhiko Yamanouchi). Sinbad eventually meets the lovely Kyra (Castellari's daughter Stefania Girolami), daughter of a wacky comic relief magician (a shamelessly mugging Leo Gullotta), and is forced to fight an evil clone of himself created by Jaffar. Despite Cozzi's Herculean efforts, SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS makes 90 minutes feel like 90 days, and the whole thing would be a complete washout were it not for one saving grace: Steiner's incredible, insane performance as Jaffar.
Unlike Ferrigno's past Italian efforts, some of the actors in SINBAD were recorded with live sound and not dubbed over (though Lou remains dubbed). British actor Steiner had a long and busy career in Euro-cult cinema (SALON KITTY, SHOCK, CALIGULA, TENEBRE, and countless others), sometimes dubbing himself, sometimes not. His magnificent voice is on full display here, as his perpetually wide-eyed Jaffar preens, sneers, grins, hisses his S's and rolls his R's with mad glee, turning all of his scenes into his personal playground and conducting a virtual seminar in how to perfectly play a camp movie villain, which he dials up even more with the mid-film arrival of his bitchy sidekick Soukra (female bodybuilder Teagan Clive), who asks "Have you taken your medication this morning?" In that respect, we should thank Cannon for rehiring Cozzi to piece together what he could from the stagnant remains of the shelved miniseries. Otherwise, we'd be deprived of Steiner's truly inspired histrionics: watch him shake his fist and yell "I'm winning!" or threaten Sinbad with "You are forcing me to carry out my most devastating act of magical madness!" or the way he yells "Guards!" or, in one of the greatest moments in all of cinema, getting in the princess' face and proclaming "No one, not Prince Ali, not even his friend Sinbad, the man who I hate more than hate itself, will stand between me...and my heart's desire! (long pause) HA!" Steiner doesn't just chew the scenery--he gorges on it with the rabid fervor of Mr. Creosote after skipping breakfast and lunch. Steiner's fully aware that he's in a shit sandwich of a movie, and where most actors would just punch a clock and move on to the next gig, Steiner acts like he's taking center stage in a Cecil B. DeMille production, just blowing everyone off the screen with his deliriously crazed acting. It's surprising that he never attempted to work in major Hollywood movies--there's any number of big budget '80s and '90s action movies where he could've played a perfect over-the-top villain. Steiner's hysterical Jaffar was a bit of a last hurrah for the veteran actor. A few years after SINBAD, he would grow bored with the lack of decent roles and the diminishing paychecks of the declining Italian film industry, prompting him to retire from acting in 1991 and make a completely unpredictable career and life change: at 50, he moved to Los Angeles and became a major Beverly Hills real estate mogul.
Is there any caption that will do this shot justice?
The marriage between Cannon and Ferrigno didn't really work out for either party, though each of the four films have their charms, and THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS, despite a recipe for disaster with Mattei and Fragasso, is the unlikely best of the bunch. Ferrigno has said in interviews that he enjoyed working on all four of these films and has nothing but nice things to say about Cozzi and Castellari. After his ill-fated journey through the Italian B-movie industry, Ferrigno returned to the US and appeared in several INCREDIBLE HULK TV-movies until star Bill Bixby's death in 1993. He also teamed with YOR's Reb Brown in the 1989 cagefighting actioner CAGE and its 1994 sequel CAGE II. Now 61, he's a regular guest at fan conventions as well as a sought-after motivational speaker about overcoming disabilities, and he's also proven willing to poke fun at himself, even spending some time on the Kevin James sitcom THE KING OF QUEENS as next-door neighbor "Lou Ferrigno."
