Hellbenders, The (1967)

Confederate officer Jonas (Joseph Cotten) along with his sons rob a convoy carrying shit load of money. They brutally kill everyone in the convoy so there will be no witnesses. Jonas wants to use the money to revive "the south" again. They hid the money inside a coffin that they have in their wagon as they plan to travel back to their home territory. They also have "grieving widow" (Norma Bengell) along for the ride just in case they get stopped by the army or the law.

The film felt too "American" for me. Maybe it was the leading actors or something. I just couldn't get into that good ol' spaghetti mood when i was watching this film. Story was good and acting was fine, but there was something holding back for me about this film.

Directed by Sergio Corbucci. He did ok job, nothing really special to say about the direction. At this point the best one from him was yet to come, The Great Silence.

Primal Rage (1988)

Science professor in the university is using monkeys in his experiments. Monkey turns into a raving maniac as his experiment fails. One of the students breaks into the laboratory and in the process sets the monkey free and gets bitten by the monkey. Infected by horrid raging-monkey-disease the student turns into a raging lunatic who starts to kill people at the campus.

Well, yeah. Pretty damn horrid movie, special effects are ok, but the plot is really thin and especially the acting is really bad. Not in that good b-movie way bad. And believe me, i tried to find something good about this movie, but i slipped into b-movie coma and just watched the end of the movie with blank stare and drool dripping from my mouth. B-movie-comatozed.

Directed by Vittorio Rambaldi. The maestro Umberto Lenzi wrote the story.

Hands Of Steel (1986)

Update 9.2.2012
New DVD release (Future Film, AWE) with great picture quality, sadly non-anomorphic. Here is couple of screenshots of the disc (click images for full size)

Original review, published 26.08.2010

In a near future... well, actually now it's the past. At least on the video cover it says "In 1997.."

Bionic killer cyborg Paco is programmed to kill scientist, but suddenly develops a conscience and lets the scientist live. He escapes the law and the people who programmed him to kill. Ends up in isolated bar arm wrestling truck drivers. Final showdown includes chick cyborg vs Paco (priceless!), helicopters and lazer guns.


Directed by Sergio Martino better known for his excellent giallos (Torso, The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh etc). Excellent '80 action film with cheesy dialog and hilarious computer stuff (~ 25 years is a long time in a computer world). John Saxon is the main villain. As always he delivers the goods.

Special kudos for soundtrack, pure '80 stuff and the dramatic score is really catchy. I couldn't find the composer, if somebody knows, please drop a line.

Masterblaster (1987)

Best of the best have gathered in a paintball tournament to see who is the ultimate paintballer. Things start to go awry when someone start to kill the competitors for real.

Shit, i remember liking this movie a lot as a youngster but i have to say that it has not aged well. First part of the movie is basically just about competitors getting ready for the competition, nothing really happens. Murders are pretty well done, but i have to say that this is one of those movies that i should have not watched again and just  have the recollection from my youth that this is one awesome movie. Not bad enough to be good.

You might wanna skip this one (especially if you have watched this at the time when it first came out on video). Probs for the title song, it's just... mind blowing.

Directed by Glenn R. Wilder. This was the one and only film he ever directed and it not hard to see why...

American Commandos (1985)

Strange movie, basically two movies in one. First one is a revenge story and in second one group of American Vietnam-vets take out the Golden Triangle heroin ring.

ACT I: The Revenge
Vietnam-vet Dean Mitchell(Chris Mitchum) works at a gas station. One night group of thugs rob the place. Dean manages to kill one of the robbers. Remaining thugs invate Deans home while he is at work. When he gets back home he finds his son killed and his wife bound to bed and raped. When he unties his wife, she takes her own life with a razor in the bathroom. This send Dean over the edge and he hunts down the thugs one by one.

At this point i was pretty confused. Film had lasted only 30 minutes and Dean had already taken out all the thugs. Now what? And why in the hell is the movie called "American Commandos". Well, lets move on to the second act...

ACT II: The Golden Triangle
Dean is offered a job to take out the heroin smuggling ring, Golden Triangle. He acceps the job, of course 'cos he is a man who has nothing to lose. He gathers his old army buddies and off they go in  this cool bulletproof armour car to take out the heroin ring. And as a special suprise for the bad guys chasing them they got motorcycle with rocket lauchers. Action wise the second act is top notch, lots of gun fights, explosions, car chases. Full of really cool stuff. Law and Mitchum are really good in this movie, both of them are just fitted for these kind of roles. Hats off to them.

Franco Guerrero plays the bad guy of the movie. He is a sadistic drug lord who takes no shit from anybody. If he's workers try to escape from the drug plantation, they are executed, plain and simple.

Directed by late great Bobby A. Suarez and comes highly recommended for all the action movie junkies. Just don't let the first part fool you, act II is where the action is.

Release year in IMDB is 1986, but lots of other sources in the Internet claim its released in 1985.

Superargo Against Diabolicus (1966), Superargo (L'invincibile Superman, 1968)

Superargo Against Diabolicus (1966)
Wrestler Superargo (Giovanni Cianfriglia) accidentally kills his opponent in the ring and he retires from the world of wrestling. But there is a job to do and the only one who can deliver is Superargo. So he is called in to stop a crazy bastard who is about to take over the world with his crazy schema.

Superargo (L'invincibile Superman, 1968)
Superargo (once again Giovanni Cianfriglia) got to stop madman who is turning top athletics into robots. And of course this madman's ultimate goal is to take over the world. This time Superargo has an Indian guru as his sidekick. So be prepared for some levitation action in this one...

Ok,what we have here is Superargo who is a caped crusader (yeah the cape and suit is bulletproof) doing jobs that normally are signed to James Bond. El Santo might be Superargos's distant cousin. At least they must have the same mask maker...

I think that these movies had decent budgets and they are really Bondesque in terms of crazed villains trying to take over the world, Superargo having all kinds of cool gadgets and the over all feel is more like a spy movie than your typical superhero movie.

I have to say that i really eyjoyed these films. Yes, they look ridiculous at this time and age but that is part of their charm. Well, i think it's hard not to like superhero running around in bulletproof spandex and saving the world!

Prom Night (1980)

Four kids accidentally cause the death of their fellow comrade. Fast forward six years and now these kids are teenagers and they are getting ready for the prom night. Maniac starts to kill them one by one. Heavily relying on the fame of Jamie Lee Curtis as the early '80s scream queen. Opening scene where the kids kill their friend is pretty well done, but after that (six year later) movie kind of drags on a little bit, nothing really happens. Maniac just makes a couple of phone calls to the victims-to-be. Leslie Nilsen plays the father of the child that was killed and Curtis plays her sister. Ending is pretty good, maniac doing "disco dance" with an axe. Not the worst slasher for the early '80s, but certainly not the best. My least favourite slasher featuring Jamie Lee Curtis, i have to say. There was remake made in 2008, but what i have read for various reviews, it's total piece of sh*t. Directed by Paul Lynch.

Hell Night (1981)

Four college pledges, 2 girls and 2 boys, have to spend a night in an old empty mansion so that they are approved in the fraternities and sororities. Older members are playing pranks on them: loud screams from the hidden speakers, ghosts moving in the hallways etc. But there is strange killer on the loose who starts to kill off older members one by one and after that he is after the four pledges. Can they get out of the mansion before it's too late!!!

Actually this movie feels more like an old gothic horror movie than a slasher. The killer is a strange wolfman type character, not your typical student-gone-insane-from-the-childhood-trauma slasher movie killer. Linda Blair is not my favorite actor. Well, basically she can't act... and in this movie her performance is really halfhearted. Sometimes she looks like she is bored out of her mind.

All in all, pretty decent horror movie, but not my favorite slasher from the early '80s.

Directed by Tom DeSimone.

SFX Retaliator (1987)

Doris (Linda Blair) steals one million dollars from the mobster (Gordon Mitchell) . When mobster notices that the money is missing he sends his men after Doris. Just when they are about catch her, special effects guy Steve Baker (Chris Mitchum) just happens to come to rescue and Doris and Baker get away. Mobsters kidnap Bakers wife and tell him that they will exchance her for the money.

Most of the action happens on car chases and there is a lot of them. All most every time Baker gets behind the wheel some one is after him. But hey, he drives a cool special effects car: it got rockets, machine guns, smoke screen maker etc. And in the final scene he disquises it as a tank! Well how about that! All three main character gives ok performance, although sometimes Blair seems bit stiff.

Ok little actioner. Action sequences are pretty standard, nothing so over the top as for example in Arizal's movies. Directed by Jun Gallardo.

Chopping Mall (1986)

Killer robots on the loose! Bunch of teenagers stay in the shopping mall after hours to have a party. Shopping mall have just gotten new security guard robots (that's right) as a night watches. Robots of course go berserk and start to kill people handling them and now they are after the teenagers. Oh dear... This is some good entertainment. Well if you have killer robots killing teenagers with lazers and stuff, it's got to be good. Think of Dawn of the Dead, just replace zombies with robots and LOTS of cheese and there you have it, Chopping Mall. Hysteria Continues have made really good podcast about the movie. They got interviews from four people involved in the movie! Check it out, good stuff. Directed by Jim Wynorski. This was his second movie and it comes recommended, really good robo-slasher-cheese-fest.

Fast Gun (1987)

Army armories are getting robbed by guys in a ski masks. No one really knows what the hell is going on. It turns out that it's a inside job, one of the officers is involved in the robberies. As the story unfold, it turns out that more and more high ranking people are involved.

Small town sheriff Jack Steiger (Rick Hill) get accidentally involved in all of this and he pretty soon discovers that the town's well-doer is also playing a major role in this.. He starts to investigate the matters.

Action wise not the most action packed Santiago movie. Lots of fist fights, but basically we have to wait for the final to see Santiago trademark explosion-gun-fight stuff.  The final is a good one, the whole town is blow up to pieces, Rick Hill "accidentally" loses his shirt and starts killing bad guys with his M60. Good stuff. And yeah, almost forgot,  sheriff Steiger can shoot down a helicopter or a big airplane with nine millimeter handgun.

Like i said, lacking non stop action but story is ok and it makes up for the missing action. And well, it's a Santiago movie so of course you want to see it!

Le Mataf (1973) / La Traque (1975)

Le Mataf (1973)

French heist movie. Lots of twists and turns, basically story about 3 heist men who forced to do a job that goes awry and how they are going deal with the outcome. I liked the long continues shots that are so rare in today's fast paced music-video-style-editing. Adolfo Celi (the Spectre bad dude in James Bond film Thunderball) makes also a good role as the catalyst behind the heist. Directed by Serge Leroy. Recommended.


La Traque (1975)

Young English woman (Mimsy Farmer) is looking for a place to rent in a French country side. She happens to tumble upon a guys from a local hunting party. One of the men rape her and they leave her in the woods. Soon the men notice that they have left one of their guns where they rape the woman.When the rapist goes back for the gun, woman shoots him. Now the hunting party is after her as they try to convince her to just forget the the whole thing ever happening.

Damn, every Serge Leroy movie seems to have James Bond arch enemy in them. In this movie one of the guys in the hunting party is played by Michael Lonsdale (from the James Bond adventure Moonraker). Lots of good actors: Farmer, Lonsdale, Michel Constantin( who played the lead role in Le Mataf), Jean-Luc Bideau. Plot is not so original but it's very well executed and the ending differs from a typical rape-revenge movie. Recommended.

Face to Face (1967)

Professor Brett Fletcher (Gian Maria Volonté) quits his teaching job due to health problems and heads west. On the way he meets outlaw Bennet (Thomas Milian) and ends up saving his life in a gun fight. Fletcher joins "Bennets raiders" and starts to enjoy this outlaw way of life. Flether's slow tranformation from good to evil starts.

At first i didn't like Gian Maria Volonté's character. To me it felt like wrong casting. It was odd to see Volonté play a good and well-spoken character. But then when his character started show his evil side things got way better. Tomas Milian (oh man that hair cut/wig) did a pretty solid job as an outlaw who still has something good in him.

Ennio Morricone's score is ok, nothing special if you ask me. The main score was good, but rest of it was pretty standard.

Directed by Sergio Sollima. All in all, Face to Face is a good spaghetti western, the story about good guy turning bad and vice versa is pretty interesting, but not nearly as good as Sollima's Big Gundown.

Scalps (1983)

Group of archeology students go on a field trip to dig up some old Indian artifacts. They stop at the gas station on the way and old Indian warns them that they should not go messing around with sacred Indian burial ground. They pay no attention to the warning and continue their trip. Once they get to the wilderness, strange things start to happen and old spirit possesses one of them who then starts his killing spree, but the spirits are not done yet!

Budget? We don't need no stinkin' budgets! This one is a really low-budget horror/slasher whatnot. There is always certain charm to see what can be done with very limited budget. There are lot of scenes where there is no actual audio, just background music. We get to see couple of special effects in Scalps (rubber faced possessed killer, head chopped off and couple of scalpings).

Story takes little too long to get going, so they could have trimmed the story a little bit. Although running time now is just little over 80 minutes.  If you are into low budget horrors, you might wanna give this one a go.

Directed by Fred Olen Ray.

Barbarian Queen (1985)

"I'll be no man's slave and no man's whore"

Set in the when the magic was strong and true...oh, wait a minute...Our heroine's, The Barbarian Queen, (Lana Clarkson) village is attacked on her wedding day. Village is destroyed and all the people killed except 3 women who survive the massacre. Among them is of course our heroine. And she is pissed. She swears that she will make those lousy-no-good-savage bastards pay.

Titties, titties and more titties. The girls in this movie just happen to lose their shirts a lot. Well, i don't mind. When you are watching these '80s sword and sorcery movies you just have be in certain state of mind. I was just in the right mood, i didn't mind that the acting was just damn awful, fight scenes looked like ...to be honest like shit. I can't even remember the last time i have seen so untrained fight scenes. But what the hell, i knew i wasn't watching top class Hong Kong action movie. And that the story was half arsed and the set was made out of cardboard.

Coming out of the Roger Corman cannon, this is one of the movies that you eather don't like or you can set your mind to that '80s sword and sorcery frequency and just enjoy this madness. Choice is yours.