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* MonsterHunter Guide to Bruno Mattei  *
*                                      *
* by MonsterHunter (oc3k@yahoo.com)    *
* Version 0.1                          *
* May 8, 2006                          *
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Contents
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1.0 Introduction

2.0 Reviews
    2.1     Cruel Jaws
    2.2     Hell of the Living Dead
    2.3     Land of Death
    2.4     The Other Hell
    2.5     Rats: Night of Terror
    2.6     Robowar
    2.7     Shocking Dark
    2.8     Strike Commando
    2.9     Strike Commando 2
    2.10    Violence in a Women's Prison
    2.11    Women's Prison Massacre
    2.12    Zombi 3

3.0 Unreviewed Films on DVD Directed By Bruno Mattei

4.0 Notes


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1.0 Introduction
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Bruno Mattei was born July 30, 1931. He has to date directed some 48 films and
participated in some capacity on many more.  Low budget forays into just about
every exploitation genre imaginable have exposed Bruno to millions of
moviegoers, probably without most of them even knowing it since many of his
films are made under a variety of aliases.  Regardless of whether he is Vincent
Dawn, Martin Miller or Pierre Le Blanc, almost every one of his movies has that
inexplicable moment where you are forced to say, "Bruno, you've done it again!"

Herein is a rudimentary guide to his works.  Full reviews of the films featured
on the MonsterHunter website are here as well as brief information on the
availability of some of his other films currently not reviewed.  The most well-
known American names for his movies are used unless otherwise noted.


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2.0 Reviews
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*****************************
*                           *
*   2.1 Cruel Jaws (1996)   *
*                           *
*****************************

Has Bruno Mattei ever made a bad movie? Or at least a bad movie that I haven't
loved? The auteur of awful responsible for such varied success stories as Rats:
Night Of Terror (the best giant-rats-take-over-the-world movie ever!), Hell Of
The Living Dead (crossdressers against zombies? That's just common sense film
making!), the literally excrement-filled Violence In A Women's Prison, and the
impenetrably fantastic mess that was aptly titled The Other Hell, checks in
with his take on yet another junkfood genre - the killer shark movie!

Made in 1995, far removed from the heyday of economical Italian versions of
more popular American films, Cruel Jaws is a testament to Bruno Mattei's
legendary talents. The credits may claim it was shot sometime when Bill Clinton
was rocking portly interns, but despite its meager budget the film is able to
accurately recreate the heady days of the late 1980s. The hair, clothes, and
music all call to mind the Italian classics of the later part of that decade
such as Black Demons and Hitcher In The Dark. In fact, during one of the
opening scenes, I could have sworn that Billy and Vanessa were driving the
exact RV that the evil hitcher drove in Hitcher In The Dark!

And considering what you see in the rest of the movie, I'd be surprised if it
wasn't the same RV! You see, Bruno is just as much as businessman as he is a
craftsman and sometimes you have accommodate your artistic vision with smart
business decisions.

Of course what I'm talking about here is the liberal use of footage from Enzo
Castellari's The Last Shark during some of Cruel Jaws. And by
"some of Cruel Jaws" I mean all of the action scenes involving sharks,
helicopters and sail boat races. But it's not like Bruno didn't shoot all the
stuff involving our characters standing around and reacting to all that stock
footage.

And really, besides all the good stuff like sharks eating people and
chewing up boats, the sequences where ugly people you don't care about babble
about how they're going to get revenge on this evil fish are really what we're
here for, right? I mean, heck, if you wanted to see this business with the
helicopter and sailboat race, you could have just watched it when it first
appeared in The Last Shark, couldn't you?

Now there's a lot misguided folks out there who are taking shots at Cruel Jaws
because it might happen to cop all of The Last Shark's action scenes or maybe
steals here or there from the various Jaws movies, and somehow even manages to
pay homage to Star Wars by borrowing its opening fanfare whenever the good guys
go out on their boat in search of Cruel Jaws (CJ), but I actually thought that
Bruno was doing us all a favor here.

If you're like me, you're living on the razor's edge 24/7. You're trying to
raise a blended family with four stepkids who think you're a no good bum just
because you're walking paper and can't get a steady gig. You got an old lady
who's a hell of a lot more old than lady. And you spend most your time sitting
in your Chevy listening to Zepplin's Ten Years Gone and trying to pinpoint the
exact moment in your life when swinging from your attic rafters became a viable
career option. In short, you're really busy.

You don't have time to be watching every shark attack movie that comes down the
pike. Zombie movies, post-apocalypse movies, women in prison movies,
nunsploitation, cannibals, each and every giallo movie, and Lucio Fulci movies?
Yeah, you make time for those. You have to take care of yourself or you won't
be no good to anyone.

But shark movies? Shoot, they even fall below those giant gator and croc
movies. At least there's always the chance those sumbucks will skulk up on land
and snatch some unsuspecting boob. These sharks though just mill around in the
ocean. Big whup. I don't live near any ocean. If these goobers who live in the
seaside villages that always seem to hold their annual regatta during shark
attack season keep shoving their meaty rumps in CJ's face, well, to paraphrase
Thomas Jefferson, "people get the shark attacks they deserve."

So it is that in a movie like Cruel Jaws, Bruno allows you to actually watch
five or six different movies all at once. Just look at it as kind of a
Sportscenter for shark attacks. How many different ballgames do they cover for
you in one broadcast? Twenty or thirty? This is what Bruno is doing, but he's
going that extra mile by adding a common narrative thread to it all. Besides,
it isn't like Steven Spielberg even invented the shark attack. It's right there
in The Bible. Remember when God tested Jonah's faith by having a shark eat his
doubting ass? They don't call it The Good Book for nothing, you heathens.

The story that Bruno fashions around his shark highlights is one of those
timeless tales of a tiger shark who was raised by the U.S. Navy to be the
perfect killing machine and who is let loose upon an unsuspecting world when
his boat sinks. This is all very Double Top Secret so the only people who know
about it are the three guys at the beginning of the movie who are trying to
scavenge the wreck and Billy who studies fish for a living (obviously you get
top level clearance when you major in ichthyology).

As if having a Rambo fish trawling the watery depths wasn't crisis enough for
the sleepy little town of Hampton Bay, it's also right during the big regatta!
This allows Bruno to demonstrate his expert editing ability as he alternates
long shots of the regatta from The Last Shark with close-ups of the two guys
from his movie "participating" in it. They're both shot from the waist up and
it's clear they aren't anywhere near any water, but they do lunge back and
forth quite a bit. In fact the only time they're in the water for the race is
when one of them pushes the other off his surfboard and then it was clear that
they were standing still! What's even more creative though is how our two
characters have sails whose colors don't match any of the sails in the footage
from the The Last Shark! I'm guessing that was just Bruno's way of showing how
far ahead those two were from the rest of the pack.

The reason this regatta has to go off in spite of CJ feasting on every horny
beachgoer he get his fins on is because of the evil rich hotel owner. He's got
a real estate deal cooking and can't afford for the tourist trade to be
damaged. He's also trying to evict Dag, the owner of the local Seaworld-type
attraction. Normally, I would point out how lame Dag's establishment is since
it seemed to consist of three dolphins, a seal, and a kid in a wheelchair, but
I'll give it a pass this time because the seal pushed the evil rich hotel owner
into the pool! Twice! And also because Dag looks like Hulk Hogan. Go ahead and
let that sink in. This dude has long, thinning blonde hair and blonde mustache
just like the Hulkster. If you drank enough gin and squinted your eyes, you may
be able to fool yourself into thinking that you're watching a really long, bad
episode of Thunder In Paradise. I won't lie to you - I was secretly hoping that
Dag would lay an awful-looking leg drop on CJ, but the most he did was mess
around with a harpoon and reminisce about his bygone whaling days.

After the regatta gets attacked (CJ even tries to eat the girl in the
wheelchair! That is one COLD killing machine!) the movie unfolds as you would
expect with the sheriff going fishing for CJ from a helicopter (yes, he drops a
giant line and hook with hunk of meat on it out of the copter), the Mafia guys
from Chicago coming by to tell the hotel owner they'll take care of the shark
problem he's been having, and Billy somehow coming up with a bomb to go along
with his equally implausible theory that the shark will be milling around the
shipwreck right when the bomb goes off.

Wait a minute. Did I mention something about some Mafia sharkhunters? That's
right! The Mafia is involved in the hotel guy's real estate business and they
come down in person to protect their investment. Thus we are treated to the
scene where two mopes head out on a stolen boat to go and kill CJ. Though I was
a bit dubious about their abilities to do this, one of the guys remarked that
he was in the marines and we know all the good undersea shark work they do. I
don't remember any other shark attack movie where made guys went out to whack
the shark so this has to be pure Bruno!

And you know what? Bruno packs all this into just a little bit more than 90
minutes! In the hands of a lesser director, secret military shark weapons,
Mafia real estate schemes, jealous boyfriends, forbidden love, brats in
wheelchairs, whacky seals, attempted dolphin poisonings, a dancing scene, a
beatdown, a regatta, copters, skeptical cops, the Hulkster, shipwrecks, and
characters spouting lines like "he's hanging around like a bad smell" would be
as bloated as a two week old drowning victim. But Bruno knows that in a cut and
paste job like Cruel Jaws, you cut the fat and paste in as much shark mayhem as
you can beg, borrow or steal. And for those keeping score at home, Cruel Jaws
marks the only time in his career that the modest Bruno adopts William Snyder
as his nom de plum. The more familiar and more porn-ish sounding Vincent Dawn
would return with Bruno's next picture, Ljuba.


******************************************
*                                        *
*   2.2 Hell of the Living Dead (1981)   *
*                                        *
******************************************

I don't think there's a bigger group of prima donnas in the world than horror
movie fans. They just sit around debating the finer points of whether some
crappy flick has good gore, wringing their hands over which obscure Italian
slasher movie is the best, and ranting and raving about boycotting this and
that company until they release some scuzzy movie in its properly uncut form.
Even worse are the wars they have over what the aspect ratio really is of some
movie no one's ever heard of.

It remains unclear whether these Pollyannas of pulp cinema have ever actually
just sat down and watched one of these things to be entertained. (Hey, I think
they trimmed six seconds off the goat orgy scene! I better check my bootleg of
a Japanese laser disc to make sure!)

With all this posing, posturing, and petulance, it is inevitable that some poor
bastard without any discernible skills will become the punching bag du jour so
that the unintelligensia of gore movies can feel superior about something in
their lives. Sadly, Bruno Mattei, the kindly and grandfatherly Italian maestro
of the low budget, high entertainment horror flick has been singled out by
these B-movie bullies.

As is usual in cases like this, I force myself to come out of retirement from
my farm where I raise wild stallions and talk to the rattlesnakes when I'm not
mowing the lawn at the Freedom School my granola girlfriend has set up to help
out all the crippled Indian kids we've taken in as farmhands. I leave my ranch
retreat now to defend the defenseless and mainly to let you know that you
should forget all that vitriolic ink that's been spilled in an effort to
denigrate the monumental ineptness achieved against all odds by all of Bruno's
films.

The usual take on this film is that the story rips off Dawn Of The Dead, the
music is ripped off from Dawn Of The Dead, Beyond The Darkness, and whatever
other scores Goblin did for different Italian gore movies, and that the whole
thing is just the absolute worst zombie movie of all time. I would submit
however that the only way a zombie movie can be bad by definition is that the
film doesn't have any zombies at all in it.

Well, Hell Of The Living Dead, Virus, Night Of The Zombies or whatever name it
goes by (it has as many aliases as Bruno does!), has plenty of zombies, they
eat plenty of pig guts and they get their heads blowed clean off, so what's
your beef? You want to say that it's just a crappy rip off of Dawn Of The Dead?
Two things about that, Dawn Of The Dead was just The Last Man On Earth with
gore, but minus the nightmarish atmosphere and Vincent Price. The other thing
is that Dawn Of The Dead is about twenty minutes longer than Hell Of The Living
Dead.

Heck, I tried watching Dawn Of The Dead not too long ago and was amazed at how
much it plodded along, like so many of its local yokel zombies. I'll go ahead
commit the great sin and say that I had more fun sitting through this one than
I did Romero's overrated epic. Tell me you weren't laughing when one of the
Interpol guys offered the leading lady some chewing tobacco in place of her
cigarette, saying something like "its really pretty good once you get used to
it". That is entertainment, my friend!

So what is it that gets the dead all hot and bothered so that they decide to
road trip from hell straight to New Guinea? Would you believe it all started
when a couple of guys in hazmat suits find a rat in the most sterile part of
their mysterious manufacturing plant? Of course you would! That's why you're
here!

Somehow this rat gets inside the guy's suit and eats him up and this causes him
to hit some control panel and the next thing you know there's green smoke
everywhere and he's chowing down on his partner. What sort of strange plant
would have a gas that would turn the dead into flesh-eating zombies? The U.N.
of course! Those jokers and their satanic one-world government agenda have been
plotting to take our gun rights away and turn us into Soylent Green for years!

What exactly is the U.N. up to in this movie and why have they sent their crack
team of four Interpol agents into the jungle to take care of the problem?
There's this program they're working on to solve hunger and all these plants
have been set up (we only see one, Bruno ain't a millionaire you know) called
Hope Stations. That's a swell sounding name, but inside the plants they're
working on something a little less-public relations friendly called "Project
Sweet Death" which sounds like a heavy metal band Bruno might have used for the
soundtrack. I guess the plan was for Sweet Death to cause all the poor people
in the underdeveloped countries to eat other. Sweet indeed!

The Interpol mission gets off to a bad start when these four guys in their ugly
blue jumpsuits and matching painters caps find themselves in the middle of
nowhere with "base" not responding to their repeated complaints about this and
that. A nosy reporter is on hand to muck up this zombie-gone-awry project and
she and her cameraman get attacked by some zombies and are rescued by the
Interpol guys.

This leads us to one of the most interesting parts of the film. I am of course
referring to the sequence where the nosy reporter, who also happens to be some
type of nudist anthropologist gets buck nude, puts on her war paint and tells
the Interpol guys that she must communicate alone with some tribe up ahead. So
she runs up to this tribe, while the Interpol guys gratefully follow right
behind her loin cloth in their jeep.

This is really the only time the movie stumbles, believe it or not. How you
screw up the nude anthropology angle is beyond me, but the movie bogs down here
like a Range Rover stuck in ten pounds of native intestines. Part of the
problem is the liberal use of grainy stock footage inserted erratically
throughout the film which reaches its apex during this segment. You get guys
dancing around, all painted up, with masks, and looking entirely different than
the people that this reporter actually encounters.

After awhile, Bruno seems to remember that he is making a crappy zombie movie
and not a crappy cannibal movie, so some zombies show up and attack. Our heroes
escape and hang out at a house for awhile for no good reason until some of them
can get attacked and killed. I think this includes the dude who took the
opportunity to put on a dress and top hat and start dancing around. Memo to
that guy: lime green is not your color - you're definitely an autumn.

It suddenly dawns on these Interpol losers that instead of playing dress up in
an abandoned house that their mission was actually far different. They need to
get to the Hope Center where all this stuff happened in the first place. Now, I
was never sure what four dudes where going to do against an entire plant of
zombies, but I imagine that was all top-secret, hush hush, and on the QT.

Once at the Hope Center it becomes clear that the plan was top secret to them
as well because they all get killed! Even the nosy reporter gets it! Her tongue
is ripped from her mouth and then they shove their hands in her throat and push
her eyes out of her sockets from inside her nosy head! It was quite a set back
for au naturale science.

There's the obligatory epilogue where the zombies show up in some other part of
the world and as shocking an ending as it is, I'll admit it lacks the impact of
seeing a guy with a giant rat head as in Bruno's Rats: Night Of Terror.
Compared to his tale of flesh-eating rats taking over the world, this story
about flesh-eating third worlders is a bit less spectacular in terms of all out
looniness (Interpol guys instead of bikers is not a trade up) and some of it,
like the guy in the dress, seems forced. It's also slow going in the middle,
but you are rewarded with every stupid character getting completely eviscerated
so I think that's an okay result.

You can carp about what a rip-off this one is, what crappy dialogue, junky
effects, and what an incomprehensible story it all has, but Bruno is a genre
unto himself. A far superior effort than Zombi 3 which he finished up for Lucio
Fulci (and reviewed on this site as Zombie Flesh Eaters 2), Hell Of The Living
Dead is the perfect companion to Rats: Night Of Terror and works as the
ultimate double bill of excessive Italian horror gore movies that took their
cues from better movies, reworked them into something so lacking in any
redeeming qualities that they couldn't even hire Goblin to do new music, and
were unleashed on unsuspecting drive-ins all over this country like a green
gassy cloud of Sweet Death.


********************************
*                              *
*   2.3 Land of Death (2003)   *
*                              *
********************************

What is up with director Martin Miller? From the awful-looking digital video
used to shoot this uninteresting cannibal epic, to the atrocious dubbing (a
white guy dubbing a black actor?) all the way to the junior high band military
music used at every inappropriate time imaginable, Marty seems intent on
putting to shame all those Italian guys that got this sort of film out of their
systems about a quarter century ago. Even wild pigs, snakes, scorpions, and
exotic spiders don't escape his clumsy cinematic wrath!

What's that? Martin Miller is really Italian legend Bruno Mattei? Did I mention
how much I loved this movie?

Sliding into one of his more mundane aliases (Pierre Le Blanc and Werner Knox
are two of my favorites), Bruno decides that in a career as long and as, um,
distinguished, as his, it just wouldn't be complete without one of these jungle
barf bag flicks under his belt. And in true Bruno style, when he tackles a
project, he does it with as much gusto as the three or four days of shooting
will allow a 72 year old man. And also in true Bruno style, he realizes that
whatever is worth doing poorly once is worth doing even worse twice! Thus, we
have another instance where Bruno makes back-to-back projects that are
basically the same film! In the grand tradition of his Violence In A Women's
Prison and Women's Prison Massacre, we get not only Land Of Death, but also
Cannibal World!

Land of Death is our first glimpse of this Bruno renaissance we are currently
experiencing. Cruel Jaws was made at the tail end of his last great run and
showed us that Bruno still had whatever it was that made him whatever he was,
but could the grand old man of grubby genre fare dust himself off after
tricking investors into flushing their venture capital down the drain of his
dismal dramas and compete at the level we all have become accustomed to? And
more importantly, would he even have the drive? After all, he's accomplished
everything in his field there is to accomplish.

From the late 1970s when he cut his teeth on scuzzy Nazi sex movies, through
his apprenticeship in the Italian minor leagues that are the Emanuelle films,
up into the early 1980s when he would effortlessly cash in on the first wave of
zombie popularity, Bruno's got nothing left to prove. In fact, by the time
Cruel Jaws flopped up on our shores, it almost seemed that Bruno's sabbatical
was more a byproduct of him having made every movie there was to be made as
much as anything else. For five long years between 1996 until 2001, the only
director the Strike Commando series had ever known would be silent.

Then, as if his Italian social security had been cut off, Bruno thundered back
onto the world stage in 2001 with the only movie that could have been his
comeback vehicle, Killing Striptease! And then, like with most thoroughbreds
who never really forget how to run, Bruno Mattei knocked six movies back in the
next three years and symbolically announced to the film world, that it was most
definitely ON! And you young punks out there better turn it up a notch unless
you're content to smell old-man fumes as he passes you by on the way to his
bimonthly directing gig.

But what about the movie? What about Land of Death? What about it? It sucks!
You don't need me to tell you that! All you need to do is have a gander at the
credits and anyone with a brainstem could figure that out. Of course when I say
it sucks, I mean that it sucks that it ever has to end!

Oh yeah! Gramps may be in his seventies, but he's still making movies like it
was the 70s! Just because Bruno has been out of circulation for half a decade
doesn't mean he hasn't been doing his research! He knows full well that what we
need from our cannibal movies is a gross out moment about every five to six
minutes and he delivers these with the ease of someone who knows his way around
a severed leg and a pail of pig guts. But Bruno isn't content to merely appeal
to our baser instincts. He's also going to educate!

I learned a lot about cannibal culture from this movie. Do you know what they
do when one of their women has been unfaithful? It involves a big ball of clay
with spikes in it and if the cuckolded guy had his heart figuratively ripped
out, well...let's just call it "divorce, cannibal style." And these savage
little buggers are also clever. When they trap some dope in a tree, they'll
stand around and set fire to it until dinner falls out of the tree! And the
only blonde woman they've ever seen? Elevated to goddess! Hey, that's just like
our world!

Taking on our savages are about five or six soldiers from the army who are in
Brazil to find out what happened to the last platoon who wandered into cannibal
country. I can't say that I was ever sure what mission it was that the first
group was on, but that's probably above my pay grade. The rescue team gets help
from a guy familiar with the territory and knows the ways of the local tribes.
He's also got all those talents that keep your butt alive deep in the jungle.
Like being able to tell from a decomposing skull that it used to be a
Caucasian. He also was able to make a positive identification as it being his
friend, just from the skull's teeth! How many of your friends could you
identify just from their teeth? (People from Arkansas excepted.)

You know, a lot of people ask me just what it is that sets a Bruno Mattei movie
apart from a regular old Italian dog turd of a movie? Romero, the guide with
the good dental skills, is a perfect illustration of the answer. Now, in a
"normal" Italian movie, the fact that he was badly dubbed and sucked on a
corncob pipe through much of the action would be more than enough
characterization. But in a Bruno Mattei movie, he's badly dubbed, sucks on a
corncob pipe, and his beard mysteriously vacillates back and forth in how full
it is throughout the movie. In some scenes it's a five o'clock shadow, then it
gets pretty full and dark, then it goes back to five o'clock shadow, then
returns to dark and full and so forth throughout the movie. Keeping track of
its strange growth patterns makes a very handy way to keep yourself engaged in
the film.

Another thing that Bruno has learned is that if there's one thing better than
killing off characters we like or are invested in, it's hacking up the ones we
hate! By the time dumb, bald guy in charge gets his arm whacked off and
continues to shoot his gun with his other still-attached arm, we're left with a
sense of satisfaction. It's as if Bruno was saying to us, "don't worry, I know
you hate these people. Just go along with me for awhile and I'll chop this son
of a buck's arm clean off! Trust me!" Will do, mon capitan!

I'm not going to sugarcoat things here. You're probably going to have to trust
Bruno quite a bit in this one. I suppose the Filipino jungles we see in the
movie are just as jungly as the ones in Brazil they're standing in for, but
somehow the camera work manages to make them looks distinctly low budget. And
there's a lot of mumbling about the customs of this tribe or that tribe as well
as several scenes where the cannibals appear to just be mugging for the camera.
But we can't really lay all that on Bruno can we? I mean, he's in there trying
his dangedest, throwing skinned corpses at us, ripping hearts out, shooting
natives, blowing up natives, and having the characters eating gruel that
contains monkey testicles. You can't really ask any more of a man than monkey
testicles, can you? I know I can't.



********************************
*                              *
*   2.4 The Other Hell (1980)  *
*                              *
********************************

If you've seen the DVD cover for The Other Hell, you don't need me to endorse
it for you. With "The Bruno Mattei Collection" plastered on it, this baby
pretty much endorses itself! Bruno is one of our most dependably prolific
Italian filmmakers who dabble in the various forms of exploitation films that
country is notorious for. A quick rundown of his credits reads pretty much like
a list of low end entries in all those genres: Hell Of The Living Dead, Rats:
Night Of Terror, Violence In A Women's Prison, Robowar. Bruno's flicks are
always the ones you go to after you've worked your way through all the better
known ones. And usually when it's all said and done, you feel pretty much like
the movie has worked all the way through you, too.

I have to confess that the ecclesiastic epic The Other Hell surprised me. Not
because it was well made. Because it wasn't. Not because it featured an
original story. Just your standard possessed by the Dark Lord tale here. And
certainly not for its acting. Franca Stoppi from Beyond The Darkness and Carlo
De Mejo from City Of The Living Dead? Wasn't George Eastman or at least Bret
Halsey available? No, what thoroughly caught me off guard was that in this
entire convent of nuns there wasn't a single lesbian!

That may sound like a questionable observation, but you veterans of scurvy
cinema know what I'm talking about here. Nunsploitation was a word just begging
to be invented and by golly if folks like Jess Franco didn't give us a reason
to. From what I can tell (mainly from the write ups and the DVD covers since
I'm not going to go to hell just for watching a bunch of nuns play grab ass,
but see our review of The Sinful Nuns Of Saint Valentine nonetheless), once all
these ladies are dropped off at nun camp, all their repressed desires blossom
into full out alternative lifestyles, usually punctuated with a fair degree of
guilt and a sneering and diabolical mother superior. Sometimes they also go for
the boys (usually strapping gardeners or handy men), but that just irks the
mother superior even more!

The Other Hell though isn't here pretending to be a softcore porn film in
religious clothing. It wants to be a horror film. More specifically, I think it
wants to be The Exorcist, but with Bruno and Claudio Fragasso manning the
controls who can be sure what it's really up to. Nominally about some deaths at
a convent and the priest who comes to uncover their cause, the movie trips and
stumbles through the outline of what it intended all the while managing to
throw in scenes that didn't make sense or weren't needed or were so poorly
staged you weren't sure what you were supposed to be getting from them.

In the bowels of the convent, there's a nun who is using her home embalming kit
to pickle a dead nun. Another nun comes looking for someone and finds her and
the next thing I know, Embalming Nun is ranting and raving about how the
genitals are the devil's doorway and is stabbing this corpse's nether regions
and cutting it out and holding the glop in her hands (this is one of the times
I was praising Bruno's shocking incompetence with the camera). Then she whips
open a coffin and it's the old mother superior and before you know it,
Embalming Nun is stabbing the other nun in the back over and over.

There is some talk about this padre coming to investigate some deaths, but it's
an old guy and his investigation consists of just sitting at a desk posing for
a sketch that another priest is doing for him. It's a bad sketch and for some
reason the priest was drawing a pitchfork next to the padre's face. Before he
could finish it though, the padre has to leave because the real investigator
has arrived. We stay focused on the artist priest and he wads up the picture
and another priest shows up and gets another book out of the library there and
they exchange pleasantries and then either Bruno or Claudio (there was some
talk during one of the interviews on the DVD that they both directed scenes)
remembered what their movie was supposed to be about and introduced us to
Father Valerio, the real investigator.

Father Valerio is a young guy full of cutting edge ideas about good and evil.
His particular brand of cutting edge involves some claptrap about how there's
positive thoughts and that there is also evil stuff, too. His clash with the
padre, who is a staunch believer in good old fashioned Satan (you can't go
wrong with the classics, I say), lasts all of about two minutes and the next
big thing the padre would be involved in is when Satan causes him to
spontaneously combust and then have his charred head put in the tabernacle. (I
had no clue what a tabernacle was since church is usually on Sundays and ESPN
begins their NFL coverage pretty early, but it looked like a cabinet set in a
bigger piece of furniture if that helps.)

Father Valerio is determined to get to the bottom of things, but he's hampered
in many different ways in the course of his investigation. Like when a medium-
sized dog chases him. This is another one of those scenes that's played up a
bit more than is probably wise since the whole time this dog is chasing him,
the dog looks like he's just smiling and is probably going to lick him or at
worst hump the crap out of his leg. But Father Valerio plays it like the Hound
of the Baskervilles' rabid brother is after him. He's saved by the creepy
gardener, who exists solely to provoke the possessed girl into killing him. He
also chops the head off of a live chicken, but Bruno says in the interview on
the DVD that it was actually the "chicken vendor" that chopped the chicken's
head off, because the guy playing the gardener wouldn't do it.

At various points in the movie we travel through darkened, cobwebbed corridors
of the convent and to a room where there's all these dolls hanging up and a
girl lying in a bed with a cat. We also see a nun in a mask prowling around
like she got lost on her way to the set of a Mario Bava or Dario Argento stalk-
and-slash movie. If none of that makes any sense, I'm just assuming it's
because either God works in mysterious ways or because the evil we're battling
in this film is so heinous that it is incomprehensible to mere mortals!

After being stymied in his attempts at checking into things, Father Valerio
gets the go ahead from the higher ups to carry out his mission with extreme
prejudice. I wish I could say that this meant busting some heads, kicking in
doors, and shaking down informants, but all it really meant was that Father
Valerio messed up some stuff on a shelf and in a closet that this catatonic nun
had. At least she was catatonic until Valerio noticed a loose tile in the floor
and discovered a lock of hair under it. As he fondled this nasty bit of hair,
the catatonic nun jumped off her bead and started strangling him with her
rosary beads. It's a miracle! Or the result of the superpowered chick who is
the daughter of Satan using her telekinesis to cause it to happen while she
hovers just outside the door. You make the call!

Father Valerio survives, the mysterious stranger disappears and it isn't long
before he launches the next phase of his investigation. He gets himself a
newfangled device that they call a video camera and records something. I wasn't
sure what he tried to record, but what he ended up getting was a pretty
convenient piece of ancient history. Let's go back about 15 to 20 years ago
when the current mother superior was just a skank who sold her soul to the
devil in exchange for a daughter. Her mother superior finds out about this,
takes the kid from her and dumps it in a bowling pot of water, but the kid's
mother rescues her. Then the mother superior strangles herself while we focus
in on this kid's eye. It's obvious a doll is actually being used and we
certainly hope that that extended to the boiling scene as well.

There's a funny showdown between Father Valerio and the mother superior that
sees her stab him in the leg a couple of times before her daughter
materializes. Then there's some tender moments between Father Valerio and the
daughter and they kiss even though her boiling left her mouth all scarred up
and nasty. Then the mother superior stabs her daughter which brings us to
another showdown, this time involving the woman who entered into a pact with
Satan and the daughter of Satan. Bruno sure isn't skimping on the showdowns in
this one!

With more than ample help from co-director and screenwriter Claudio Fragasso
(Zombie 4: After Death) Bruno, while not achieving the cheap lunacy of some of
his other films (giant rats ruling the world, nude anthropology, Reb Brown),
manages all sorts of confusing antics sure to keep the viewer in state of
increasing disbelief. Telekinesis, dog attacks, boiled babies, genital slicing
and sketching priests might all add up to a cringe-inducing cocktail of
crudeness to most, but thankfully for us viewers, it's just another day at the
office for Bruno!



***************************************
*                                     *
*   2.5 Rats: Night of Terror (1983)  *
*                                     *
***************************************

The year is 225 A.B. The A.B. stands for "after the bomb" and the world is a
different place than the one we're used to in Italian gore movies. Gone are the
cities infested by zombies, gone are the tropical jungles infested by zombies,
gone are the grottos infested by vampires. All that remains are buildings
infested with rats. But not just any rats mind you, but rats that look
suspiciously like guinea pigs with a nice bronzer applied. It's all because of
the radiation and the accompanying mutation you understand. It makes you wonder
what guinea pigs look like in this new world!

The problem with the guinea pigs playing the rats is that in most scenes all
they're doing is milling around, occasionally sniffing the air (probably the
fumes from their paint job) and sometimes crawling on counters and stuff. For
scenes requiring the rats to attack humans, they drop from above and you just
know that some Italian guy made about 50 lira a week dumping buckets of rats on
the people starring in this movie. Other times the rat attacks are accomplished
by having some other guy probably stand just out of camera range and lob gobs
of rats at these people who have to shriek and cower, instead of just running
away which is what a regular person would do. Since this is A.B. and times have
changed they just stand around yelling and moaning about how the rats are
biting them.

But just who are these rodent-fearing primitives that have taken to living
again on the planet's surface while everyone else still lives underground?
Bikers, you fools, bikers! Yes, after the bomb the people that decide to make a
go of it on the surface immediately become a biker gang. I don't know how or
why, but they're a motley crew of people with catchy biker names like Video,
Chocolate (she's the token black survivor), Taurus, and their fearless leader
whose handle is Kurt. Kurt? The only great leader I ever heard of named Kurt
was former St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner.

The action begins in earnest when Kurt's biker gang roll into some abandoned
city and Kurt gets off his hog, looks around and gives the okay to stop. This
biker gang of Kurt's is something to behold. I don't like to talk out of school
but back in the day when I used to ride with the Brotherhood on the left coast
(and you know which gang that was since I capitalized the "b" on brotherhood),
we all wore our leathers and our colors, but I don't remember anyone wearing
neck kerchiefs like Fred from Scooby-Doo or studded headbands. I remember those
from a 1983 Pat Benatar music video, but not when cruising 101 with the boys.

This biker gang decides that this is a good place to spend the night in spite
of the rats they've observed and immediately split up to check the place out.
They locate a bunch of plants that are being grown by someone with grow lights
and stuff. They also find a room with a bunch of 1980s era computers (about the
size of a couple of biker mamas) and Video starts punching buttons and a
message comes up about eliminating the group. Whoops! This is also about the
time that someone mentions that he doesn't like the combination of computers
and rat-bitten corpses that they found earlier.

The power to the growlights gets turned on and Noah hangs around down there and
starts gardening or something. This is also where a water purifier is, but the
rats start dropping into it causing the bikers to whine (and yes it comes off
as a whine) about how their water is getting polluted. With the gang split up,
the rats start to pick them off.

Lucifer and his girlfriend get killed separately after they take their sleeping
bag somewhere else to hump. This was fortunate because Lucifer felt pretty
uninhibited with his nakedness and from what I had to see, he should have been
plenty inhibited. His girlfriend gets the award for "Best Death in A Sleeping
Bag" when rats crawl in it and she can't escape because the zipper is stuck!
Should've got one from L.L. Bean. When the other bikers find her body, they
don't bother to pull her out to see what she died from, they just assume that
Lucifer must have strangled her. Wasn't it obvious that she had been attacked
by man-eating rats and had the zipper get stuck on her sleeping bag, making it
her tomb, albeit a comfy-cozy one?

Enough people start turning up dead and rat-bitten that Kurt finally realizes
that they are under attack by the rats. The rats though are one step ahead of
Kurt and everyone is really bummed to find out that the rats have eaten the
tires on their motorcycles making escape impossible. Unless you were to simply
walk out the front door until you were good and far away from the rats. But to
a biker gang, that's just so much crazy talk!

They decide to stay the night and trap themselves in this building by boarding
it up Night Of The Living Dead-style. I found this to be kind of dumb since the
rats were already in the building and anyone that's ever had a mouse problem in
their house will tell you that it's not as simple as nailing the doors and
windows shut. In fact, I bet they would say that they would rather try and keep
flesheating zombies out of their house as opposed to those little varmints.

Now even though they decide to board up all the doors and windows, someone
somehow forgets to board up the window that a couple of them are standing next
to. This results in lots of rats flying and jumping through the window like
they were being thrown by an Italian grip or best boy or whatever union job is
in charge of that sort of thing. People keep getting chomped and this doughy
guy (Duke) dressed up in a Michael Jackson military outfit starts challenging
Kurt's authority to lead the gang (there's about five of them left now).

They have a showdown and Duke temporarily backs down. Later Duke would take one
of the girls hostage aboard this big tank-like bus vehicle they have and ends
up blowing him and her up with a grenade that he tosses at some rats in the
truck he was standing in. Good move, Duke - that's real leadership material.
Duke did come in with some good dialogue when another guy said that rats can
tell an intruder by smelling the intruder's urine. Duke asks if the rats were
attacking because they smelled how everyone had pissed themselves because they
were scared. Good old lovable crusty Duke. You can be sure he's making the Big
Man Upstairs laugh with that salty wit.

One of the remaining girls goes crazy and slits her wrists and then Kurt shoots
her trying to hit rats or something. Later he's crying and wussing around about
how cruddy everything has kind of turned out. They find some gizmo that plays a
recording of a guy who explains how the rats mutated and came from underground
because they had been forced out by something to do with the people that live
down there. It was a rather long-winded speech and didn't really explain
anything more than we already knew, but did set up the ending that was so
shocking I guessed it as soon I saw all these people with hoods and gas masks
and fishbowl helmets you couldn't see through.

In a welcome surprise, Kurt gets eaten up by the rats and only Chocolate and
Video are left. With Video's blonde perm and fey demeanor, I never would have
pegged him as one of the two to survive this night of terror and I certainly
wouldn't peg him to help restart the human race above ground.

It's the next morning and all these people in hazmat suits have come from
underground spraying rat poison all over and killing all the rats. Chocolate
thanks them for saving them and these guys just look at her through their masks
without saying anything. Chocolate starts to get worried that maybe all isn't
what it seems to be with these other survivors and then this dude takes his
mask off and... At this point I'm torn on whether I should tell you that this
guy had the head of a giant rat or whether I should let you experience the
shock and terror yourselves.

This ending is telegraphed pretty well and doesn't do much to explain anything
that was going on A.B. (you do remember what that stands for, right? If not,
start the movie over from the beginning.), but it fit perfectly with the rest
of this bizarre hybrid of zombie flicks, biker flicks, post-apocalyptic flicks,
and rat flicks.

Bruno has harnessed all his inabilities as a film maker with this movie and
this effortless exercise in dumb, gory mayhem should not be missed. Not for its
hilarious dialogue (one guy says "Stop talking crap!" and I've been using that
saying ever since), the dubbing that made you wonder if it was added without
Bruno's knowledge as some type of sick joke, or imaginative use of a completely
unbelievable story (Why would there still be power on? Why would anyone be
trying to grow plants when there's an army of rats on the loose? Why would
World War III turn half the human race into bikers and the other half into
giant vermin?).

None of this matters because the characters go from one rat encounter to the
next with little time to reflect or actually think and unlike Bruno's infamous
half-breed zombie movie he sort of made with Lucio Fulci (Zombie Flesh Eaters
2), this one doesn't overstay its welcome. This is really the kind of movie
that restores your faith in the idea that bad Italian gore movies can be fun to
watch instead of the slow, humorless machines they seem to grind out with all
too frequent regularity. In a movie with lots of unanswered questions, only one
really nags at me though: Why did it take all the way until 1983 for someone to
make it?



*************************
*                       *
*   2.6 Robowar (1988)  *
*                       *
*************************

It was 1988. Only a year had passed since Strike Commando had invaded our
cinemas and our hearts. Strike Commando fever was everywhere, from guys dying
their hair Reb Brown Blonde to an attendance spike at Disneyland following the
Strike Commando's heartfelt endorsement of it to a dying native boy. Almost as
easily as he had defeated the Big Russian twice on the big screen, Rebbo had
become an silver screen icon along side the likes of Trash from Bronx Warriors
and Bronx Warriors 2, the adult dwarf who played the child of a woman in Burial
Ground and kept trying suckle her, and Dean Jones. Eventually, the inevitable
question came up for the team behind Strike Commando - what next?

How do you follow up what is arguably the perfect mix of cheap jungle action,
nonsensical dialogue, and Big Russian mayhem? The obvious answer is to make
Strike Commando 2 and director Bruno Mattei, never one to turn down an obvious
paycheck, went ahead and did so that year. Rebbo, having accomplished all could
in the Strike Commando universe, chose to hand off the coveted Strike Commando
title to Brent Huff and while Huffbo-mania never reached the heights that his
predecessor's did, Strike Commando 2 was (and still) remains the second best
Strike Commando movie ever!

If the public thought that this meant the end of the Holy Trinity of Reb, Bruno
and idea man Claudio Fragasso, they need not have worried. Just because Bruno
shot Strike Commando 2 didn't mean there wasn't time to work on four other
films in 1988. And one of those would see his final, most explosive teaming
with Reb and Claudio of all! Sparing all expense both in terms of budget,
actual execution, and most of all, idea-wise, they concocted a steaming jungle
stew of guys shooting stuff, blowing up stuff, and getting the stuff kicked out
of them by technology run amok!

Have you ever sat through Predator and thought to yourself how much you'd like
to see the same movie, but without the cool space monster, the big name actors,
the special effects, and technical expertise of John McTiernan? Did you ever
watch Robocop and say to your buddies, "you know what would make this movie
really rad? If Robocop looked a dude in a motorcycle helmet, shoulder pads, and
black fetish outfit and was lurching around a jungle reducing no name Italian
actors to pulpy goo." And once Strike Commando was over, did you stifle a sob
whispering, "please God, just one more adventure with Rebbo in the jungle! One
more Rebbo mission! I would give everything I am and everything I have just to
see his stupefied expression in between scenes of him grunting while opening up
on some native with his assault weapon one more time!" Well, I'm sorry for all
the atheists out there, but Robowar is proof positive that there is a Big Man
Upstairs and he's listening to the pleas of His followers who love low budget
foreign rip-offs of successful Hollywood movies! Praise the Lord and pass the
ammunition, Rebbo!

Always looking for ways to improve his movies, or at least make sure they come
in on time, Bruno takes the essential elements that made Strike Commando such
solid entertainment and jacks them up to eleven! Thus, we have Rebbo in the
jungle with his dirty half-dozen or so shooting up the foliage almost from the
beginning. Gone are the jungle death matches against Big Russians. Gone are the
idiotic, but ultimately endearing speeches about popcorn trees and genies who
grant your every wish at Disneyland. Scaled way back is that trademark Rebbo
wit that had him laughing in the face of metal teeth. In their place is a
harder, grittier Rebbo who is as prone to dropping the f-bomb as he is to
dropping some jungle rebel who happens by. While movies like Predator have
characters announcing that they ain't got time to bleed, Rebbo doesn't even
have time to say it, let alone do it!

Rebbo is the leader of a military team called BAM. These guys are so hardcore
that I can't even repeat what BAM stands for! Okay, I'll give you a hint.
"Mutha" is somewhere in there. Just before the mission begins, I can only
assume that Rebbo is deep undercover on his boat with his teammates since he's
strutting around in a powder blue half shirt and matching slacks (with white
belt!). I'm guessing he was probably trying to avoid the paparazzi.

Honestly, I can't recall precisely what their mission was. I know that Omega
One, the military's newest, perfect, ultimate weapon had a brain fart and
starting shooting down our helicopters in the jungle and that it needed to be
stopped, but Rebbo and the rest of BAM were in the dark on that. They had an
"advisor" attached to their team named Mascher and he turned out to be the
creator of Omega One. (Why isn't he called Robowar? Omega One sounds like some
type of fish oil supplement.)

Mascher spends most the movie keeping what he knows from Rebbo so Rebbo and BAM
have to periodically threaten to shoot and/or slit his throat to get him to
parcel out the information. Eventually he reveals a secret about Robowar that
threatens to tear Rebbo's very soul apart! Well, at least it induces
battlefield flashbacks, but in Rebbo's world that's pretty much the same thing.

Robowar isn't the only problem Rebbo comes up against. If you grew up in the
jungle like I did, you know that it's full of deadly intrigue! Every step could
be your last! One BAM member gets harassed by a wimpy looking snake. Another
steps into a bear trap, no doubt set for those jungle bears we hear so much
about. Don't believe me? Check out The Jungle Book - it had a bear in it! Then
you have the guerrillas who are roaming around shooting people. This is how
Rebbo hooks up with Virgin. Virgin? That's what the credits said. Normally, I'd
be prone to making a snide comment about how proud Catherine Hickland must be
of this role, but she seems to normally work in soap operas, so the role of
Virgin in a Bruno Mattei movie may actually count as a "big break." Plus she
used to be married to David Hasselhoff, so she's probably suffered enough.

Virgin though proves to be more than just a blonde bimbo (besides that part is
already filled, right Rebbo?) as she is the last survivor of a group of people
from the United Nations who were setting up hospitals in the jungle. There's
some jabber about a cholera epidemic and moaning about guerrillas destroying
hospitals and killing children, but where Rebbo and I really started paying
attention was when she said she was a chemist and could make napalm! That's a
handy skill to have for a gal named Virgin being ruthlessly pursued in the
jungle by an unstoppable killing machine!

Once Rebbo gets the rest of BAM killed off by Robowar, it's just him and Virgin
trying to stay one step ahead of the unreasoning deathbot! They take refuge in
one of Virgin's hospitals (this must be one that the guerrillas didn't
completely destroy - see they aren't that bad!) where Virgin makes napalm from
the stuff lying around. Let's see. Dirty bedpan, used hypo, two Vicodin, a
rubber glove, and PRESTO! Instant napalm! A gal named Virgin might not have
much future as a girlfriend, Rebbo, but you might consider putting her on BAM
if you ever re-form it.

Rebbo goes off to lure Robowar to the hospital and the moment we've waited well
over an hour for is finally here: Robowar vs. Rebbo! After whupping Big Russian
ass twice, you knew the only next logical opponent could be the half human,
half cyborg murder machine whose death toll in the movie is unsurpassed! Except
by Rebbo's of course. Rebbo was pretty much shooting at anything that moved all
movie long. He and BAM must have been carrying a small arms depot in their
backpacks as many rounds as they unloaded on the guerrillas, flimsy huts,
jeeps, and trees.

Robowar pretty much has his way with Rebbo before Virgin rolls in to deliver
some of that hospital acid that's always lying around examining rooms to
Robowar's head. Robowar may be an unstoppable killing machine, but a bottle of
acid to his head short circuits him and renders him malfunctioning long enough
that Rebbo and Virgin can escape the hospital and blow it up. "Thank goodness
that's over," says Rebbo! "I mean, if that acid affected him that much, Robowar
must be Roboscrap after having his ass blown up in a hospital!" Rebbo must not
have seen Halloween II and Halloween IV or he would have known that getting
your ass blown up in a hospital is no more than a scraped knee to unstoppable
rampaging freaks!

The film ends the only way a confrontation between the worst of modern
technology and the best of modern man could - atop a jungle waterfall! But
what's this? No punches thrown? No headbutts launched? No curse-filled vows to
destroy one another's way of life? No, the battle this time isn't between two
people, but between Robowar's high tech upgrade and the last remnants of his
humanity. He asks Rebbo to do what Rebbo couldn't when Robowar was Rebbo's best
friend mortally wounded on the battlefield before he was turned into this
cybernetic monstrosity. He asks Rebbo to kill him! After waiting an
appropriately respectful amount of time (5-6 seconds), Rebbo says, "will do!,"
punches the self destruct button on the remote control, and jumps off the
waterfall followed by fiery chunks of Robowar.

If you have any doubts about what you're in for, one of the BAM guys also
played the traitorous cyborg Ratchet in 2019: After The Fall Of New York as
well as Trash's father in Bronx Warriors 2. Easily another winner from Rebbo
and friends. The moment in the film where Rebbo throws a knife at a guy
impaling him on a wall, turns to the camera, winks and says, "don't move"
encapsulates everything great about the Rebbo-Mattei-Fragasso axis of
exploitation. I just don't understand why they didn't call it Rebbowar.



********************************
*                              *
*   2.7 Shocking Dark (1990)   *
*                              *
********************************

As you know, so many of life's lessons can be learned in the arena of big time
sports. Whether you learned them like I did on the field of Cub Scout softball
or just by watching it on ESPN2, it's all the same. Sports gives youngsters a
valuable leg up in not only surviving, but thriving in today's hectic world.
For instance, boys are taught never to let their Little League coach give them
a ride home alone and girls know almost instinctively that the baritone-voiced
woman P.E. teacher with the short hair and season tickets to the local WNBA
team shouldn't ever be invited over to the team slumber party. But where sports
really shines is its ability to showcase the skills of the natural - that
phenom from the cornfields just outside of Buttstink, Kansas who effortlessly
triumphs against all comers and rewrites the record books in the process.

Film is no different than sports of course, which is why it's almost as cool.
Only a lack of a meaningful postseason prevents it from being the equal of our
great team sports. Don't believe me? I give you March Madness and Bowl Season
versus the Golden Globes and the Oscars. That's what I thought. Apology
accepted. Getting back on track though, there are naturals in the cinema just
as in sports. For every Babe Ruth and Nile Kinnick, the Silver Screen counters
with a Cary Grant and a Kathy Bates (who looks a little like the Babe). They've
got Hank Aaron and O.J. Simpson. We've got Tom Hanks and Robert Blake. Them:
Michael Jordan. Us: Bruno Mattei.

Jordan of course was the legendary Chicago Bulls basketball star who was so
instrumental to the National Basketball Association that they ceased operations
once he retired for the fifth time. The only thing number 23 did was win.
Didn't matter where or how. On the nights when his shots were falling he'd hang
325 points on a team like the New York Knicks. Unless he was sick. If he was
sick, he'd gut it out and get off for about 350. I can remember one game where
he had been shot in the head the night before and was recovering from brain
surgery. During every time out he would be slumped over on the bench with a
cool towel over his head, but at the end of the night he dropped 336 points on
his opponent (probably the Knicks). Then there were those nights when he
couldn't find his rhythm. The shots would rim in and out and the Bulls would be
on the brink of elimination! And what would MJ do? Find a way.

Find a way. That's what the greats do, isn't? Deep down inside them, they know
they've got one last run, one last gasp, one final shot to get everyone else to
the promised land. Stay in the game, just give me an open look before that
clock hits triple zeroes, and I'll put us on my back one more time. That's what
all of us legends do when it's not going our way, when it looks darkest, when
lesser souls would've long since cashed in their chips and started playing
half-speed wondering where dinner was after the game. And in the hands of
anyone other than Bruno Mattei, Shocking Dark would have been the kind of movie
where you'd not only be wondering about dinner, but about the next day's
breakfast and lunch, too.

Venice before the year 2000 is a beautiful city of canals, museums and other
neat stuff. I'm guessing the Venice after 2000 is pretty much the same since I
haven't heard anything in the news about it sinking or anything. But what about
the Venice of tomorrow? That Venice is a post-apocalyptic nightmare! Closed off
from the world, that Venice is a dead city, the entrance guarded by three guys
in gas masks standing in front of a "do not enter" sign! What could have
happened to the Venice of tomorrow that it turned from the city of lovers (or
whatever it was) into the city of hazmat suits? It was something about seaweed
choking out all the oxygen. Pretty much the usual end of the world stuff from
the Italians. I'm sure it made sense to them.

From that nifty set up, I was surprised that a mystery movie began to play out.
At least I thought it was a mystery movie. I mean, I spent the next thirty
minutes trying to figure out what was happening. Let's see, we've some
scientists that have gone crazy in some tunnels under the city and if that
wasn't bad enough, they're getting killed by monsters! If it's not one thing,
it's another! Then there's this special team of marines called...the Megaforce!
You know they're Megaforce because of their uniforms that consist of ugly vests
with pointy shoulder pads and the motorcycle helmets they wear. Oh, and the
forearm guards, too. Very natty.

I think Megaforce was being sent on a mission through the tunnels to find out
what happened to the scientists that went crazy, but Bruno was more interested
in showing us the locker room antics of the racist black woman member of
Megaforce which was fine since watching her and an Italian guy get into a
shoving match while Megaforce was supposed to be getting ready for their
mission was preferable to boring exposition about why some eggheads need
rescuing. And it just isn't Megaforce going along. There's a scientist named
Sara and a robot-like guy named Samuel Fuller who works for the Tubular
Corporation.

The Tubular Corporation is a big multinational that built the tunnel between
Venice and the outside world. Since there's absolutely no reason for Sam to go
along on this trip, it's clear that Tubular is an evil company and that Sam
will have to doublecross everyone at some time. And since Sara befriends the
daughter of one of the missing scientists later on, it's clear that she and her
kid will end up facing off against the evil Sam later on.

Once the infighting in the locker room is finished and everyone suits up for
the mission, the movie starts shooting airballs for about the next 45 minutes.
I will say this about the movie though. If you are a fan of films where people
just wander around corridors alternately shouting and shooting, you will love
this freaking movie! Bruno shot almost the entire thing in the bowels of a big
power plant. Exposed pipes, wrought-iron stairs, platforms, and railings,
hissing steam and the occasional research lab are the order of the day in
Shocking Dark. Throw in some guys in slimy rubber monster suits and Megaforce
constantly checking their scanners to track each other and the monsters and you
got Alien set in your local electric company's basement! But with like ten
times more monsters than that one wimpy alien in Alien!

If you're still awake by the time they hit the lab, you'll learn of some
diabolical scheme by Tubular to poison Venice for two years so that they can
re-sell all the real estate and valuable works of art (huh?) that they've
somehow gained ownership of for "70% of current value!" I love an Italian sci-
fi/horror/post-apocalyptic movie that hinges on re-sell value! It's like a
project from The Apprentice, but with Bruno instead of The Donald!

But just when it seems as if Tubular's real estate scheme and art auction plans
appears to be the most dastardly of all schemes, the robot-like Sam is revealed
to be a robot! And even worse, he's gone and initiated the self-destruct
sequence! On what, I have no idea, but we are assured that whatever is going to
self-destruct is going to blow up everything real good and spread the enzyme
that has created the monsters all over the Earth! It doesn't seem to bother Sam
that this latest scheme will probably make it tough for Tubular to peddle all
their Renoirs and Matisses, but what do you expect from a bucket of bolts who
matter-of-factly announces that this new enzyme that's created these monsters
is just like a floppy disk and that humans are the computer! Thank God most of
us don't come with floppy drives anymore!

As preternaturally dull as most of all this was, I never wavered in my faith
that somehow Bruno would find a way to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.
And just as coolly as you would expect from the man who made 26 movies from
1980-1990, Bruno nailed a jumper just before the buzzer sounded and pulled out
a most satisfying victory! Despite Tubular Corp.'s plans to corner the Venetian
real estate market, despite their research into monster-making enzymes/floppy
disks, despite being able to design killer cyborgs who uncannily mimic wooden
actors, they also found time to work on a little something called the Tubular
Time Pod!

Sara and her kiddie friend accidentally find themselves inside the time pod and
thrust back into the past, thus averting certain death in the future! But wait!
There wasn't just one time pod! Oh no! There were TWO! And guess who hitched a
ride in time pod number two? The Terminator! I mean Sam! And wouldn't you know
it, but his time pod thrusts him into the exact same moment and location in the
past as Sara! What are the odds of that happening with two experimental Tubular
Time Pods? As it played out, about 1:1.

Remember in The Terminator when a killer cyborg from the future menaced a woman
named Sarah? And remember that one scene where they showed the Terminator
running over a child's toy truck? Well in this movie, a killer cyborg from the
future is menacing a woman named Sara and the cyborg steps on a child's remote
control car! It's really more of an homage than naked thievery. Besides, when
they were calling this movie Terminator II back when it came out in 1990, that
was a whole year before James Cameron's Terminator II: Judgment Day!

It would be unfair though to give sole credit for this amazing turn of events
solely to Bruno Mattei because where's there a Mattei, there's also a Fragasso!
Claudio Fragasso, whom I realized in a moment of sheer brilliance is the poor
man's Dardano Sacchetti (does that make Bruno the poor man's Lamberto Bava? -
Egads!) turned his prolific scripting abilities on this project just as he did
with several of Bruno's other babies, including Rats: Night Of Terror, Hell Of
The Living Dead, Strike Commando, Strike Commando 2, Robowar and many others.
Making this feat even more incredible is that Fragasso did so during the same
year he wrote and directed three of his own movies including Troll 2 and House
5!

It's almost like Bruno and Fragasso (or Brugasso as the tabloids like to call
them), knew how good they were and were challenging themselves by having
Shocking Dark sit there like an ignored dog turd on your living room floor for
an hour and then just flipped the schlock switch and went to town on us! And
how impressive was it that they managed this without Reb Brown or a jungle
location? Simply put, an awesome save guys. And the scene where Sara stabs Sam
in the face with a broken bottle so that he could run around with half his
cyborg skull exposed is just that right touch of rip-off that makes a cold dog
turd taste just a little warmer. Another tacky triumph for Brugasso!



**********************************
*                                *
*   2.8 Stirke Commando (1987)   *
*                                *
**********************************

Frequently when I'm at one of those Strike Commando conventions they hold a
couple of times a year, I hear other fans debating which was their favorite
Rebbo moment. For some it was when he fought the big Russian to the death. For
others, it was when he fought the big Russian to the death a second time.
Still, you have your holdouts that maintain it was when Rebbo burst forth from
the water in super slo-mo, screaming and big gun blazing. There's also a school
of thought that when Rebbo was running along the rice fields in super slo-mo,
screaming while rockets and bombs exploded around him was perhaps the finest
display of Rebbo mayhem in his 100 minute long tour of duty.

Me? I appreciate all those bits and can't wait to relive them five or six times
in the coming week, but I've also got a sensitive side that I'm cool with and
so does Rebbo. Whether it was when Rebbo was describing Disneyland to his new
native sidekick, Lao, or when it was when he was describing Disneyland to his
dying native sidekick, Lao, you could practically feel his anguish as he
related how all you had to do was climb trees to eat the popcorn and there was
genie there who would grant you any wish you wanted. Sure, that anguish was the
anguish of a guy who obviously has no clue what the hell Disneyland is, but he
meant well enough. Besides, he was just flexing his emotions in anticipation of
the end of the scene where he holds the dead Lao in his arms and screams the
name of the big Russian at the top of his lungs so that it echoes throughout
the jungle. Jakotaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Brings a tear to my eye just typing it.

Rebbo of course was born Reb Brown. His name is undoubtedly familiar to you
because of his stint as the greatest Captain America of all time. After two TV
movies in that capacity, Rebbo had nothing left to prove there and migrated to
more challenging roles such as Yor in Antonio Margheriti's Yor, The Hunter From
The Future. After that it was off to co-star with Gene Hackman and Patrick
Swayze in Uncommon Valor and then with film legends Christopher Lee and Sybil
Danning he made The Howling II. By now, Rebbo was more than ready to headline
his own picture. America was hungry for a new breed of hero. A hero like
Stallone, but without the speech impediment. A hero like Chuck Norris, but
without the creepy beard. A hero like both of those action icons, but you know,
cheaper.

Rebbo would be unleashed on an unsuspecting world in a tale torn from today's
headlines! Or at least from previous successful action movies. He was the best
soldier the army ever produced! A killing machine! Head of a strike commando
team, he was betrayed by his superior officer, left for dead and fought his way
back to civilization, before being sent back behind enemy lines to face off
against the Red Menace that was propping up the North Vietnamese only to be
betrayed again! A story so loaded with potential for lots of explosions, guys
getting shot and Rebbo snarling, "I'm going to kill the bastard!" at least once
per act, that it would take a very special kind of film maker to capture it all
in a minimal amount of time for a less than minimal cost.

But who? Who could be entrusted with nurturing Rebbo-mania until its successful
fruition? Who could the screenwriters feel comfortable with taking their baby
from the written page (I'm pretty sure there was only one page to this one) to
the big screen (or more likely to the little screen in your living room)? There
was one man who could take on this heavy burden of responsibility and still
make two other movies that year as well as a six hour TV miniseries. One man
who so perfect a choice that he would make a sequel the very next year. And
four other movies besides. One man named Bruno.

Italian junk juggernaut Bruno Mattei jumps into the Vietnam movie genre with
both feet just as he did with the shark attack genre in Cruel Jaws and the nun
genre with The Other Hell. But what of the guys that wrote this? How did they
feel? After all, some don't appreciate Bruno for the towering titan of tacky
trash he is. All things considered, I doubt they minded too much since it was
Bruno and frequent co-conspirator Claudio Fragasso who came up with Rebbo.
While Claudio has been involved with scripting many of Bruno's most highly-
regarded films ( Rats: Night Of Terror, Hell Of The Living Dead), he's an
accomplished director in his own right helming numbered flicks as Troll II,
Zombie 4: After Death, and House 5, so he can appreciate what Bruno does here.

Bruno uses his trademark pell-mell, damn-the-character-development, let's-kill-
a-bunch-of-stuff directing style that has served him so well throughout his 98
year career. Rebbo finds himself up to this thick neck in one action-packed
scene after another. Whether he's shooting people, stabbing people, breaking
their necks, or heaving grenades at them, Rebbo proves that the only thing as
inexhaustible as his guts is his ordnance. Rebbo also knows that sometimes you
have to lay your guns down, strip off your shirt and go toe to toe with your
big Russian arch enemy with only your two fists between you and a Soviet-
dominated southeast Asia. They also kick each other in the nuts a few times,
but war's a dirty business isn't it?

As fights go, it was one for the ages! These guys were throwing punches so hard
that even when they didn't hit each other, they still got hit! The wind alone
from their haymakers was pounding one another into submission! And when they
ran at each other in slow motion and smashed heads, I was sure none of them
would ever be the same after the fight was over. At least physically. I wasn't
too concerned with Rebbo's mental faculties after his Disneyland speech. This
brutal contest could end only one way - with the big Russian getting punched
clean off the top of a waterfall! Heck, I didn't even know there was a
waterfall anywhere near these guys until I saw the big Russian soaring through
space. That's how into the fight I was!

But what of the evil Colonel Radek who seems to be out to get Rebbo? What with
Radek having his strike commando team blown up, then having Rebbo sent deep
behind enemy lines armed only with a camera, and finally with him having Rebbo
shot at from a helicopter that was supposed to be picking him up, you might get
the idea that Radek isn't all that he seems. And he's not! He's really
Christopher Connelly who starred in Lucio Fulci's Manhattan Baby , played
Hotdog in Bronx Warriors and was the evil Orlowsky in Django Strikes Again.
Despite this impressive resume, Radek is unable to shake Rebbo and his thirst
for vengeance!

The war is over and the time is the present, yet Rebbo remains obsessed with
tracking down Radek so much so that he's even willing to go to Manila to do so.
Of course since that's where the movie was being shot anyway, it's not really
that big of deal, but Rebbo did get to take in a cock fight while he was there
so it wasn't all business. After blowing Radek in half with a rocket launcher,
Rebbo is walking around minding his own business when who should appear but the
big Russian! And this time he has metal teeth!

Non-plussed by this startling development, Rebbo battles the big Russian for a
few seconds before shoving a grenade into his mouth and blowing him in half as
well. Showing that indomitable American spirit, Rebbo catches the big Russian's
metal teeth, smiles and says "these Russian dentists make some pretty good
dentures."

Then, demonstrating that perhaps he was affected by the giant headbutt during
his first fight with the big Russian, Rebbo engages in some voice over
narration about how any resemblance to living or dead people is purely
accidental or one in a million...maybe! Oh Rebbo, don't sweat it! We know your
one man battle in a war they didn't want you to win has nothing to do with
Braddock's or Rambo's one man battle in a war they didn't want them to win
either! Just enjoy some R&R, maybe hit Disneyland or something. But stay out of
those popcorn trees. That stuff will go straight to your hips.



***********************************
*                                 *
*   2.9 Strike Commando 2 (1988)  *
*                                 *
***********************************

The first time was for his country! And for his crew of blown up strike
commandos! And for that little kid named Lao that he promised he would take to
Disneyland where the popcorn grows on trees! This time though...it's personal!
Strike Commando returns with his most vengeance-filled mission ever as he beats
the Philippine jungles (standing in for the Nam) looking for his mentor, the
man who saved his life back when they were both fighting the Man's dirty little
war!

Major Vic Jenkins has been reported killed, but Strike Commando is told by an
old buddy that Vic is really alive and that his death had been faked and he is
being held prisoner by the CIA or the KGB or the PTA or someone. Both Strike
Commando and my reactions were immediate! Strike Commando immediately went down
to the local CIA office to bust some heads while I wondered just who the hell
Major Vic Jenkins was.

If you're watching Strike Commando 2, it's only because you've seen Strike
Commando, so it stands to reason that you are familiar with everyone in the
Strike Commando universe. There's Strike Commando himself (Rebbo), there's the
evil traitor for the KGB (Colonel Radek), there's the big Russian (Jakoda) and
there's Rebbo's almost-foster-child, Lao. Of course, everyone but Rebbo ended
up dead by the time Strike Commando had played out, but I think I speak for all
fans when I say that we wouldn't be adverse to bringing any (and preferably
all) of these folks back for some old "not even death can prevent me from
getting my revenge on you, Rebbo!" shenanigans.

The director and writer one-two punch that was Bruno Mattei and Claudio
Fragasso have a little something extra up their sleeve with this entry though.
Not content to let Rebbo rest on his laurels, they invent a whole new slew of
traitorous dogs and evil Russians for him to contend with. And there's also
something different about Rebbo this go around. Let me see if I can put my
finger on it. Oh, Rebbo isn't Rebbo anymore! That's it!

For those of us who were raised on Rebbo, the blonde, affably violent Reb Brown
will always be our Strike Commando. For this mission though, Rebbo gets made
over into a dark haired, surly brute played by Brent Huff. While it's a bit
like watching Timothy Dalton taking over for Roger Moore, Huffbo had already
proven his metal in running around a low budget jungle when he and Tawny Kitaen
humiliated themselves for our enjoyment in The Perils of Gwendoline. Though
Huffbo doesn't have any scenes where he makes anguished speeches about
Disneyland and the genie that lives there that will grant any wish (I wish that
Rebbo would return for a Strike Commando 3!), he does manage to belt out
Rebbo's catchphrase, "die you bastards!" thus throwing a bone to the hardcore
Strike Commando fan.

Bruno and Claudio knew that asking Huffbo to carry this picture by himself just
wouldn't be fair to him so they spent every single penny they had, borrowed
money from friends, raided their kids' piggybanks, held bake sales, collected
scrap metal, sold their plasma and signed up two-time Oscar nominated Richard
Harris for the part of Major Vic! I haven't done the research, so correct me if
I'm wrong, but this is probably the only time an Oscar-nominated actor and
Bruno Mattei have ever crossed paths outside of the dry cleaners!

Yes, years before he ran Harry Potter's school, Albus Dumbledore was running a
heroin operation deep in the steamy jungle! Despite Richard looking thoroughly
confused as to just what he's doing in this (I heard he only did it because he
loved Strike Commando so much, but that might just be a rumor I made up.),
inexplicably, this role was not one of the two the Academy would nominate him
for!

Normally, any other Italian director would put it on auto-pilot once he secured
the services of an actor that normal moviegoers had actually heard of. Not
Bruno Mattei! He says, sure, I got one of the grand old men of the cinema even
while he still had some good roles ahead of him, but I want to make Strike
Commando 2 so much more than the sum of its Oscar-nominated and The Perils of
Gwendoline-veteran parts! What if the evil Russian guy in the white ice cream
suit employed a bunch of ninjas! And what if Huffbo had to make his escape in a
hooker bus that he commandeered! Well, shoot, you'd have me forgetting just who
the heck Rebbo ever was!

All of these antics are precipitated because of Huffbo's misguided attempt to
bust Major Vic out of a CIA safehouse. The next thing we know, we're getting
one of those hostage videotapes where Major Vic is saying that his captors need
$10 million in diamonds or they'll hand him over to the KGB, who will extract
all the secrets he knows. Since Huffbo is the only guy in the room that owes
Major Vic his life, he finds himself in the jungle with $10 million worth of
diamonds in his fannypack and a mission to bring Major Vic back dead or alive!

The first stop on any search and rescue mission in the jungle is the local
watering hole where a fellow can pick up a drink or six and an annoying female
companion whom he can bicker with constantly while they get into and out of
jams of varying degree. Huffbo meets up with Rosanna, the proprietress of the
Moulin Rouge while she's engaged in a drinking game with one of the natives.
First one to belch loses!

Once that's mercifully over, the white Russian and the ninjas roll in and fight
Huffbo and his new gal pal. When she "remembered" to tell Huffbo that she had
ten sticks of dynamite under the bar, I was practically rubbing my hands
together in giddy anticipation of what was just around the corner. Is there
anything more satisfying in cinema than watching cheap, thatched roof dwellings
in the wilderness blow up over and over and over?

Once they get Rosie's bar blown up, she and Huffbo head off to rescue Major
Vic. After this is accomplished, Major Vic gives a half-hearted speech about
how the war for Huffbo was still going on inside Huffbo and you're just
thinking, "hurry up and turn traitor so we can get the torture scenes and
subsequent bust out and revenge killings under way." And once they are under
way, the movie kicks into gear with Rosie going undercover as a hooker (glad to
see that cop show cliche worked into a jungle action movie with ninjas), Rosie
and Huffbo's escape and their return once Huffbo finds out that Rosie left the
diamonds with the trick she killed.

But what of the Strike Commando 2 you didn't see? What about all the craziness
that went on after hours on the set? Actually, you did see that. It was called
Zombie 4: After Death. In an effort to recoup the costs for Strike Commando 2
(thanks Richard!), while Bruno shot it during the day, Claudio used all the
gear to shoot his zombie movie during the night! Even Huffbo got in on the two-
for-one action when he convinced his then-fiancee Candice Daly to star in
Zombie 4: After Death, so that she wouldn't miss him while he was gone making
Strike Commando 2! While that sounds like a good idea in theory, in practice it
must have left a little to be desired since Ms. Daly's biography shows that she
married someone else that year and was later found dead at the end of 2004. The
one aspect of the intersection of these two projects that remains unanswered is
the one that everyone has always wondered about: Did Richard Harris ever run
into Zombie 4: After Death star and gay porn star, Jeff Stryker?



************************************************
*                                              *
*   2.10 Violence In a Women's Prison (1982)   *
*                                              *
************************************************

He gave us the greatest post-apocalyptic-giant-ratmen-battles-biker movie ever
made (Rats: Night Of Terror), the epic crossdresser-battles-zombie movie (Hell
Of The Living Dead) and now Bruno Mattei would like to sentence us to one of
the all-time scuzziest women-in-prison movies ever! Well, the women-in-prison
movie he made right after this one with the same cast, crew, and most of the
same story (Women's Prison Massacre) is also one of the all-time scuzziest, but
I'll leave the debate as to which is actually the scuzziest to the historians.

Say what you want about Violence In A Women's Prison, but you can't fault it
for not being scuzzy enough for you. Chalk full of lesbianism, brutality, and a
men's prison right across the street, Bruno makes sure that he gets every cent
worth of filth out the $67,000 budget. And no, I'm not making a moral judgment
when I refer to the filth in this movie. I'm just talking about the pail of
feces that star Laura Gemser empties all over one of the women prison guards.

A cursory glance at the DVD insert shows us what sort of time we're in for,
what with chapter titles such as "Parcel Check/Brawl," "Contagious Sex," "Death
Slide," and my personal favorite, "Poop Party/Rats." Yes, that particular
chapter details Ms. Gemser's close encounter with said pail as well as her time
in solitary confinement (apparently hurling dung all over the prison guards is
a big no-no in these strict women's prisons run by sadistic wardens). Never one
to leave his cronies unemployed, Bruno uses a bunch of rats that he would later
shoot to super stardom in his previously mentioned rat opus, to take bites out
of Gemser's stocking-clad legs while she's in solitary.

That brings up a few questions I had about this women's prison. Now I've done
my fair share of time in women's prisons and one of the things I found a bit
odd about this particular women's prison was the wardrobe. First of all, the
inmates are all wearing these pigeon-poop grey dresses that look like big flour
sacks. That part I could understand. With the prisoners probably running the
laundry, they're aren't going to worry about mixing colors and white and the
government isn't going to want to spring for something along the lines of Cheer
with Colorguard.

The part of their wardrobe that left me puzzled was the fact that underneath
these sacks, they all wore thigh high hose! That seemed like a silly clothing
choice from an economic standpoint. When you've got gals getting their hose
torn in poop fights, rat attacks, and when getting thrown down mountains of
sand at the local quarry where they're all breaking rocks, you're going to be
going through an awful lot of hose. At the very least, I would strongly suggest
that the government look in to getting some of these gals some bras in lieu of
hose. That at least might cut down on a lot of the impromptu flashing of the
male inmates inexplicably housed across the courtyard. Either that or let the
gals wear high heels. Those prison issue flats just don't give you that
sophisticated "I'm a convicted hooker who's going to be raped by a prison guard
tonight" look that I think they were trying for.

Now that we've dissected the fallacies with the wardrobe in this one (Thigh
highs? Really, some of these gals could have used control top easy!), it might
be best to move on to the story behind all this violence in that women's
prison. Those of you who've seen the Jean Claude Van Damme prison polemic,
Death Warrant (you know the one - he gets hit in the head with a really big
wrench) will no doubt find the story of this movie comfortingly familiar.

Laura Gemser plays a reporter named Emanuelle who goes undercover to uncover
the shocking truth about a women's prison run by a bunch of really mean broads.
And though I'm a bit rusty on this whole Emanuelle business, my tastes running
toward more wholesome fair like Italian movies where fashion models get sliced
instead of perverted French and/or Italian trash where fashion models get laid,
my understanding is that this is some sort of entry in the whole Black
Emanuelle offshoot of the Emanuelle series (a bit like a Mothra movie instead
of a Godzilla movie).

Manny is freelancing for Amnesty International which I think justifies all the
dirty stuff that Bruno chooses to dramatize, since it's all in the name of
exposing abysmal prison conditions in the hopes of effecting some positive
change. Really, it's no different than when the nightly news forces us to watch
pictures of starving kids with bloated bellies while we're trying to horse down
that third hamburger and not trying to spit up our fourth beer in disgust. It's
just that in this case, you've got ugly Eurobroads getting fondled by prison
guards instead of kids with flies camping on their faces.

So, after initially being a bit ashamed at having purchased this DVD, I was
uplifted to know that I was watching a powerful political statement about how
the way we treat those who deserve to be treated the worst (hookers, drug
addicts, old lady pickpockets) actually is a reflection of our own humanity or
lack thereof. I was expecting the movie to end with an 800 number that I could
call to get more information on women's prison reform instead of the syrupy
ballad that sounded as if the Bee Gees had fallen on hard times and called in
some favors with Italian film score legend Goblin to get them a gig in Italian
movies.

Manny arrives at the prison and immediately becomes part of the story she was
trying to uncover when she is handed the by now infamous pail of pooh-pooh and
ordered to empty it. Now, I won't sit here and tell you that I wasn't rooting
for her to empty it all over these nasty skanks giving the orders, but once she
did it, I began to wonder if this was really the smartest thing to do. I don't
think that her job was to go into the prisons and provoke abuse. But once the
crap went flying the prison guards played right into her hands and embarked on
a full-fledged dump-splattered cat fight!

Okay, we've established that the evil prison guards don't like having poop
flung on them. It's time to really get things going and introduce a couple of
characters that we immediately know will be helping out our heroine once she
gets out of solitary confinement with all those hungry rats. Her cell mate is
an old hag who's been there forever and she can show a new prisoner the ropes
as well as the pet cockroach she keeps in a little wooden cage. And yes, that
poor little devil gets stomped by one of the bad guys, thus bringing this
women's prison into PETA's gun sights as well as Amnesty International's.

Her other pal is a kindly doctor in the men's prison doing time for euthanizing
his terminally ill wife. He helps her escape and they decide to take a breather
from escaping by engaging in some good old fashioned "escaped prisoner sex" (is
there anything better?) Of course they get caught (taking the morning off for
humping instead of humping it to a country without an extradition treaty has a
way of doing that), but the doctor mailed a letter to the government about the
prison conditions, so there still might be hope for our horny heroes.

Definitely sleazy in every way you can imagine, from the used-looking actors
and actresses to the two-toned painted walls (pink and white) of the women's
prison itself. The movie seemed to delight in being as classless as possible
and though it played out exactly as you assumed it would (old hag with
cockroach gets killed, the prison snitch gets killed, the head guard we all
hated ends up stabbed in the back with a spoon), really, if you're the kind of
person that bought a movie called Violence In A Women's Prison, would you have
it any other way? A thoroughly tasteless, oversexed, understoried, violent
effort done in the lowest budget of ways from Bruno Mattei. For anyone else, a
dismal failure, but for Bruno, another triumph of exploitation filmmaking,
showing that he may not be the master of many (or any) genres, but isn't shy
about tackling and applying his own unique cinematic spackle to any of them.



*******************************************
*                                         *
*   2.11 Women's Prison Massacre (1983)   *
*                                         *
*******************************************

Do you remember that women-in-prison movie that starred Laura Gemser? And was
co-written by Olivier Lefait? And was directed by Bruno Mattei? You know the
one - Laura was wrongly imprisoned in the scuzziest women's prison in Italy and
was relentlessly tormented by the evil guards and depraved inmates. Ursula
Flores and Franca Stoppi were a couple of Laura's enemies that made sure her
life was hell. And it also featured Gabriele Tinti as the nice guy who found
himself battling along side Laura inside the prison.

1982's Violence In A Women's Prison you say? Well, I guess that was a pretty
easy one, since Violence In A Women's Prison is right at the top of everyone's
list of great movies about gals getting poop tossed on them. But what if you've
already seen it about 25 times and have a hankering for something the same, but
not? What if somehow, someone could come along and re-mix your favorite movie
about spoon-stabbings into a completely similar concoction of prison
indignities? Would you take advantage of this opportunity? More importantly,
would Bruno Mattei?

I know, I know. Dumb question. This after all is the guy who let pal Claudio
Fragasso use all his gear during the night to make Zombie 4: After Death with a
gay porn star while he shot the Reb Brown-less Strike Commando 2 during the
day! Rest assured that Bruno knew what a winner he had on his hands with
Violence In A Women's Prison and didn't want the magic to end. Besides, when
you can marry the women-in-prison genre with the Emanuelle genre, you'd deserve
to be locked in a prison yourself if you didn't do it! And I mean a men's
prison!

Shot right after Violence In A Women's Prison with pretty much the same people
behind and in front of the camera, Women's Prison Massacre known variously as
Blade Violent, Emanuelle Escapes from Hell, and Emanuelle in Prison proves that
even when faced with making the same movie as he just finished making, Bruno
has the skills to make it even better than before! And he does it right from
the beginning!

Emanuelle is in the middle of putting on a play for the rest of the prisoners
and it's one of those cutting edge performance art pieces that involves her and
a couple of her compatriots describing how they got hosed by being put in the
slammer. One of the gals even begins to babble about snakes and a praying
mantis to evoke something I'm sure was so profound it was over my head. Heck,
I'm just here to see guards get impaled by kitchen utensils. What do I know
about the philosophy of crime, punishment, and scary-looking bugs?

I suppose that having a captive audience can be a double-edged sword though. On
the one hand, they may be glad to sit through any old show you put on, even
something like The Vagina Monologues. On the other hand, they may be pissed
that they are being forced to sit through pretentious trash when they could be
out raping each other in the shower. Sadly for Emanuelle, the latter attitude
among the rest of the prisoners prevails and they are not shy about expressing
their displeasure. Emanuelle gets hit in the face with a tomato and I suddenly
found myself standing on my couch yelling "food fight!"

Once the food fight kicks in, Bruno doesn't let up on the gas for the next 80
minutes, giving us one awesome set piece of sleaze and violence after another.
What I liked about this movie was that Bruno held nothing back for any kind of
big finish (which was good since the movie didn't have a big finish). You know
how some Hollywood movies always save the big arm wrestling scene for the very
end of the movie? Movies like Sly Stallone's Over the Top and all those other
arm wrestling movies always tease the big showdown with hours and hours of
training, domestic strife, and sweaty grimacing.

Women's Prison Massacre though knows you probably have a family that won't be
patient enough to put their lives on hold for you while you wait for Emanuelle
to finally put that blonde tramp Albina in her place with some dinner time arm
wrestling. Families can be selfish bastards that way. So it gives it to you
almost immediately following the opening food fight! But not before the warden
complains to Emanuelle about how her play sucks and utters that most famous of
showbiz lines: "the show must NOT go on!"

It's also around the big arm wrestling match that some of the movie's other
great dialogue gets uttered such as when Albina calls Emanuelle a "haughty hot-
n-tot" and another gal says to Albina "I want to bite your nipples off!" And
she's not smiling when she says it either!

Now, unlike Over the Top and all those other big budget arm wrestling movies
Hollywood likes to churn out every summer, Albina's shocking loss to Emanuelle
doesn't end their rivalry! No siree! Why, there's still the showdown in the
shower where Emanuelle gets the better of Albina again by pulling her wig off
of her! Then there's still the showdown in the prison yard where Emanuelle gets
the better of Albina by stabbing her with her own knife! And who could forget
that we still have the showdown where Emanuelle gets the better of Albina again
during a friendly game of Russian Roulette?

I think that Bruno must have somehow figured out a way to compress time with
this movie because looking back, you would think that the four death matches
that Albina and Emanuelle engaged in would have been more than enough action
for a single three hour long wrestling pay-per-view, but here it wasn't even
the main story line in a movie that didn't even last an hour and a half! This
classic good-looking prisoner vs. skanky-hag prisoner dynamic only served as
the backdrop against which a prison hostage situation involving four male
criminals holed up in the prison played out!

They were Italy's four most dangerous criminals! Robbery, rape, drug smuggling,
murder, bad dubbing - their crimes a veritable catalog of the worst humanity
has to offer! Their leader killed seven cops all by himself the last time they
busted out of jail! Blade von Bauer is a maniac who kills with a razor blade
while their leader is such a bad customer the press just calls him Crazy Boy!
And so, while they await trial, they'll be held in the women's prison.

Sure, it sounds a bit questionable now. And in hindsight, things didn't work
out for anyone, but really who could have foreseen that bad guys dressed as
cops would try to carjack that prison van on the way there? And kill two of the
three cops guarding them? And really, could any of us have predicted that while
the lone surviving cop wasn't paying attention that the prisoners would slash a
guard's throat and take the warden hostage? And could he have known that when
he gave up his shotgun that they would have used it on him? It's just one of
those deals where everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.

Generally, I don't sweat it anymore whether the version of the movie I'm
watching has all the gore and violence intact. If there's an uncut version of
something out there, that's what I'll get, but I'm not going to get all worked
up if the Greek VHS version runs 31 seconds longer than my German DVD. Does it
really matter in the grand scheme of things if I don't see a fake head roll
down the floor for the full 20 seconds? Or that I only get to see a chick get
stabbed, but don't get to see the blade come back out?

However, this is a different case. First and most obviously, the more Bruno you
can get the better. Second, the cuts made in the version of Women's Prison
Massacre I saw messed up some of the story and actually could be dangerous to
kids! Since I unwittingly picked up the R-rated version, I was not able to see
what happened when this girl pulled the old "razor blade in the cork trick" on
some guy that was trying to rape her. It didn't affect me that much - I'm an
old hand at these flicks and as soon as I saw her sticking the razor blade in
the cork, I knew exactly what she was going to do. But what about the kids?
Shouldn't they be fully aware of this method of self-defense? And shouldn't
over-eager guys on prom night at least have this in the back of their mind
before they try to get too frisky?

One of the other cuts that sort of put a crimp in things was when they cut out
some dialogue where Emanuelle is told she'll be getting out of prison soon. The
way the version of this movie ended is that Emanuelle is locked back up in her
prison cell as the credits roll! You'd think that after besting Albina 4-0 in
their series of battles as well as aiding a police officer during the hostage
stand-off she'd at least get time off for good behavior!

I also think the Russian Roulette scene was another unwise cut. As it plays out
in the censored version the only thing the kids will learn about the popular
party game is that you don't want to be the person sitting next to the gal who
pulls the trigger because you'll end up with red gunk all over you. Don't these
bluenoses that make these cuts think about the harm they're potentially doing
to America's youth by not showing heads being blown off and ding dongs getting
sliced up? Recommended, but only provided you get your kids the unrated
version.



***************************
*                         *
*   2.12 Zombi 3 (1988)   *
*                         *
***************************

Oringinally reviewed as Zombie Flesh Eaters 2 on MonsterHunter

Behind every bad movie, there's a really sweet story just waiting to be told.
Primarily that story is usually about how something so smelly and fetid could
have ever been excreted onto the ground by the people (usually Italians,
sometimes Jess Franco) involved. Zombie Flesh Eaters 2, the retarded U.K.
retitling of Zombi 3 has one of these histories that should warn away the semi-
conscious among us and allow the vast majority of humanity to avoid ever having
to be inadvertently sentenced to the 88 minute life term (no parole unless you
hit the eject button) this movie imposes on all, including first time
offenders.

The behind-the-scenes hi-jinks that surrounded the making of this movie are
legendary. Even though the DVD box says that this movie is Lucio Fulci's, he
actually quit some time during the filming and the director's duties were
handed off to Bruno Mattei. Bruno as you may or hopefully may not be aware is
the creative spring from which was birthed Rats: Night Of Terror and more
importantly to his zombie-cred, Hell Of The Living Dead.

If you're like me, you're wondering just how they were lucky enough to get
Bruno when he just happened to not be working on anything. I mean, he made
three other films in 1988, one of which was called Robowar. Did I mention why
Lucio quit? Because the script stunk! That is just too sweeeeet! How bad does
your script have to be so that Lucio "We need more maggots here!" Fulci walks
off the set over "creative differences" (I think the zombie's head should be
drilled, not smashed with a two by four!)? And just who was the author of
something so cruddy that not even the director of Voices From Beyond would do
it? Claudio Fragasso! That would be Claudio " I also wrote The Other Hell,
Rats: Night Of Terror and Strike Commando for Bruno Mattei" Fragasso!

If I was to tell you that this time the zombie epidemic starts because some
mental midget steals a briefcase full of a top-secret bacteriological weapon
mysteriously named, "Death One" and that it somehow cracks open (because it
gets dropped) and the guy that stole it manages to get some of the poison gas
that leaks out onto him, would you be the least bit surprised? I thought not.

It becomes clear rather quickly that we will be getting the script scrapings
from a genre notorious for it's lack of innovation. What I like about this
movie though is that it doesn't get bogged down in regular movie stuff like
explanations or reasons. How many times have you sat through a movie and
thought to yourself, "you know this would be so much better if they didn't
explain so much or if it made a little less sense."

So anyway, you have this heist that goes horribly wrong which starts things
off. What was it about the heist that caused it to fail so miserably? Um, I
don't know, maybe the fact that your plan involved driving up in a van,
shooting some military types that were taking the Death One secret sauce out
for a walk for no discernable reason, and then running off into the lush,
tropical vegetation while being pursued (and shot) by army helicopters. It
sounds to me like that thing went off just like they drew it up in the dirt of
the driveway to their trailer.

I hate to state the obvious, but we have no idea who the thieves are, why they
wanted the stuff, how they knew the stuff was there, or why this stuff does
what it does. I also remain a bit unclear why this super cool bacteria gas is
being hauled around in a briefcase that busts open as soon as it gets dropped
on the ground. Do you think that feature was noted in the L.L. Bean Traveler
catalog that they must have bought it out of?

Even though this dude drops the stuff and gets shot, he makes his escape so
that he can infect the rest of the movie. If you had just been infected with
some of this Death One stuff where would you go? Hospital? Free clinic? 7-11?
How about a hotel? Yep, this guy whose hand and face are rotting off decides
that he could use the air conditioned, free HBO comfort of a room at the Sweet
River Resort. (I'm assuming this is the same resort that other characters end
up at later in the movie, but maybe this movie featured zombies in two
different hotels.)

These types of movies where the dead get re-animated or people are turned into
flesh-craving losers because of some dumb government experiment demand badly
acted roles of scientists (trying to cure the problem) and military (too stupid
to do anything but unwittingly spread the virus).

This time you have a lead scientist with very thin and badly managed hair,
prone to flailing his arms about and speaking in strangely-cadenced English,
whining that they are working on an antidote and that the army isn't helping
things out any when they go and burn the corpse of this infected guy, thus
spreading the Death One stuff through the air in his ashes.

The guy in charge of the military (represented by three guys in fatigues and a
bunch of guys in white hazmat suits) brushes off everything this scientist says
and whenever the scientist makes some wild prediction about how there's going
to be more zombies, the general pooh-poohs that by calling the comments
"science fiction." In fact, the script is so lacking, they have the general
recycle this "science fiction" take again toward the end of the film.

Not content to have the standard number and type of idiotic characters, this
movie goes one up on the rest of the genre by having a DJ named Blue Heart on
the radio giving updates about things, spinning the stacks of wax, the platters
that matter, and moaning about how Mother Earth is getting the shaft from the
Man. See, this isn't some dumb as dirt Italian zombie movie, it's actually a
dumb as dirt Italian zombie movie with a Message! And that Message is that we
should be spinning our radio dials away from self-important DJ's with
pointlessly enigmatic monikers.

Even with all these people milling around the movie sputtering out dialogue
that even Lucio Fulci found abominable, we have yet to meet our heroes and
heroines. This is where the jeep with three army guys on a weekend pass come
in. You know they're ready for some R&R, because one of the guys listens to a
song that Blue Heart plays and makes the observation that the music is "making
me horny!" The beauty of riding along in a jeep is that in situations like
that, you don't have to stop the car to throw his ass out since there's no top
on the dang thing.

So what do a jeep load of army guys do on their time off? How about an RV load
of chicks! It just so happens that the vehicle in front of the army guys is a
big motor home with all these young women in it. There are also some guys in
it, but they don't seem to mind that these army men are whooping it up as their
babes hang out the window making goo-goo eyes at them. The women though are
devious little vixens because they are hoping to hook up with the soldiers so
that they can have access to the soldiers' beach. Whoa, that sounds like a plan
straight out of the "let's hijack some Death One and run out into the woods
with it" school of scheming.

Thankfully we don't have to concern ourselves with these inane story
developments (or underdevelopments as the case may be) because soon they get
attacked by a bunch of birds that have been infected with the poison ash of the
first zombie's body.

I should also note that there is a separate couple that we see earlier and they
notice these dead birds on the road, stop to look (what sort of date are you on
where you would stop to stare at roadkill?), and the guy gets bit. Soon he has
a pulsating wound on his head that is spurting blood and instead of hotfooting
it over to the hospital, his girlfriend stops to get help at the old abandoned
gas station.

The usual follows - zombie attack, gas squirting everywhere, really big
explosion. The girl eventually hooks up with the army guys somehow (they've all
since decided to trap themselves at the recently run down Sweet River Resort)
and the rest of the film details their efforts to stay alive (in spite of
themselves).

This is the kind of zombie-fantasy movie where the broken down resort you've
stupidly cornered yourself in has crates of assault weapons in the basement and
even a flame thrower! As the brochures must say, it's the kind of place to go
when you just want to get away from it all and blow the crap out of stuff.

The remainder of the movie is a catalog of stupid gore scenes, deaths of people
whose names we never knew, and really bad music. I really need to point out the
fact that this movie went above and beyond the call of duty for movies of this
ilk with its wide ranging selections of different styles of hideous sounds.
You've got the generic zombie synthesizer music played repetitively, except
when Blue Heart is playing the annoyingly amateurish and bland pop songs. The
absolute worst moment of this movie is at the end when Blue Heart dedicates a
song to all the undead in the audience and proceeds to play this light-metal
garbage that would make groups like Dokken and Britny Fox cream their probably
by now ill-fitting Spandex.

The best part is when the two survivors who are flying around in a helicopter
(hey that's what they did in Dawn Of The Dead, right? I guess that's how you
end a zombie movie then.) and are listening to Blue Heart on the radio (glad to
see that while you're busting your hump escaping the flesh-eating undead that
you still have time to tune in your favorite radio show) and comment matter-of-
factly that it looks like Blue Heart has gone over to the other side. My God!
It isn't bad enough that these zombies have been running around the countryside
ruining nice resorts, screwing up weekend passes, and blowing up gas stations,
but now they've gone and taken over our favorite radio program!

A terrible effort that made no sense from start to finish and reeked in every
possible way. Music sucked, acting sucked, script sucked, the film looked like
a monkey had been hired to fill in as director, and there were scenes that
seemed to be inserted for no other reason than because they had some left over
gore they needed to use.

I'm speaking of course about the infamous "head flying out of the refrigerator"
scene. I saw this and was so stupefied that I actually rewound it to watch that
scene again (a truly dangerous thing to do for a movie that you wish was 8
minutes instead of 88 minutes) because I thought, surely I had zoned out and
missed why this scene made any sense. Well, I can tell you that it wasn't my
fault. That head appears to just fly out of the fridge for no good reason and
attack some dumb broad that is spending her time at the zombie attack looking
to make a sandwich or something.

As far as the actual direction employed by the fifty Italian gore directors
that apparently worked on this misshapen genetic defect of a film, there isn't
a hint of Fulci's style in this one absent all this mist that I call "Fulci
Fog" that tends to roll in for no reason other than to generate atmosphere.
This fog rolls in at day, at night, near water, on land, it doesn't matter
where you are. I think it even rolled in inside the hotel once or twice. I
can't remember if they had room to hide a fog machine in the fridge with that
flying severed head though. Somehow, against all odds, Bruno makes a sow's ear
out of a sow's ear with this one.


===============================================================================
3.0 Unreviewed Films on DVD Directed By Bruno Mattei
===============================================================================

S.S. Girls (1977)..........U.S. DVD from Shriek Show

Womens Camp 119 (1977).....From DVD Network, fullscreen with forced Dutch
subtitles

Cicciolina My Love (1979)..From Raro Video, Italian language only

Porno Holocaust (1980).....U.S. DVD from Exploitation Digital (Uncredited
direction on Joe D'Amato film)

Belle da morire (2001).....From CVC, Italian language only

Venetian Caprice (2002)....From C.P. Digital with Engish subtitles

Privè (2002)...............From CVC, Italian language only

Snuff Trap (2003)..........From C.P. Digital with Engish subtitles

Mondo cannibale (2003).....From CVC, Italian language only; also a Japanese
release from Media Suits with English Language

Belle da morire 2 (2005)...From CVC, Italian language only



===============================================================================
4.0 Notes & Credits
===============================================================================

The films listed in section 3.0 and several of the ones already reviewed can be
purchased from http://www.xploitedcinema.com/

Some information on films and Bruno Mattei gathered from Xploited Cinema and
the Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/).

All reviews written by MonsterHunter and can be accessed at
http://monsterhunter.coldfusionvideo.com/index.html

You can contact MonsterHunter with comments and/or corrections at
oc3k@yahoo.com