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.

Raiders of the Sun (1992)

Set in the world after the final nuclear war. There are only few survivors and world has fallen into chaos. This time the most valuable thing is gunpowder. Alliance called Alpha-Group tries to get the world back on the track by providing some kind of law and order. But there is a traitor (Richard Norton) among them  who has left the Alpha-Group and has formed his own vigilante posse.

Story focus on the soldier called Talbot (Blake Boyd) who has been honorably discharged from the Alpha-Group. He returns to his home village only to find out that it has been destroyed and his wife has been kidnapped by the vigilante posse. Talbot infiltrate the posse in order to get his revenge and his wife back.

Good post apocalyptic movie from the maestro Santiago. Lots of action and this time they did go all the way with the explosions. There is lots of them, i tell you. Post apocalyptic soldiers wear this time old American football gear, helmets and shoulder pats painted black. But hey, that's ok. It's the world after the nuclear holocaust so you have wear what you can...

Santiago regular Nick Nicholson has one of the biggest roles i have seen him in as the sidekick of the Vigilante group's captain.

Good fun, give it a spin.

New Gladiators (I guerrieri dell'anno 2072 , 1984)

Lucio Fulci's cheaper than cheap post apocalyptic gladiator movie. Plot is pretty simple: Network television wants to give people good old times Roman style gladiator entertainment, "win you live, lose you die" is the motto. They get couple of convicted criminals to be the gladiators and start to train them.

Movie is a strange mixture of PA/Blade Runner/2001: Space Odyssey (computer that turns from good to bad...). Sad to say but one could easily skip the first hour of the movie (basically Gladiators repairing for the event) and go straight into the gladiator tournament part. That is the shit! Gladiators racing in the arena on the motorcycles, wielding their swords and spears like in the ancient times... That sequence is very well executed and basically saves the movie from being a big disappointment. Oh yeah, good ol' Fred Williamson from the Black Cobra series is one of the gladiators. Do i even need to tell you that he is the man. Once again.

Comes recommended although you might wanna use the fast-forward button in some parts of the movie.

Specialisti, Gli (1969)

Gunslinger Hud (Johnny Hallyday) returns home to seek revenge for this brother's death. Town people have lynched Hud's brother because they think he was involved in robbery. The money from that robbery is still missing.

Directed by Sergio Corbucci, he does a pretty good job. Although Corbucci was totally fed up with westerns at this point (Alex Cox speaks about this in his great book "10 000 ways to die", if you are interested in spaghetti westerns get that book!) i think this was pretty good movie. Johnny Hallyday gives a solid performance as vengeance driven gunslinger.

One of the best (or maybe just weird) scenes in the movie is when bunch of hippies(were there hippies in the wild west?) take over the town and tell everyone to strip naked and hand over their money. So there are about 30 extras lying butt naked in the old western town street at the final scene.

All in all, good western from Corbucci.

Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985)

Kosugi and Huff plays couple of bad ass agents in this movie. They are trained combat machines who will take down all the bad guys who are standing in their way...shit i got carried away, move on. Here is the plot: Terrorist kidnap group of people traveling by bus and threatens to kill them if one of their terrorist brothers is not released. Of course Kosugi and Huff are signed to this case.

Oh man... Lots of jaw-droppers in this movie. Fighting midgets, terrorist boss who has lots of nazi vibes going on and his sidekick, a lesbian amazon. Throw in couple of ninjas and explosions and there you have it: 9 Death of the Ninja!

Action scenes are ok and there is good amount of them. Mr. Huff delivers the goods as always and he is given plenty of screen time. To me it seems that Kosugi's acting is just too "serious" at the times. But maybe it's one of the factors that makes this movie so over the top.

Directed by Emmett Alston (New Year's Evil)

Django the Bastard (1969)

Django (Anthony Steffen) walks into a town and he is about make everyone pay who had betrayed him and left him for death in the battlefield.

Film starts with terrific scene. Django has a wooden cross with him as he walks into town. Cross has a "dead soon to be" guy's name written on it. Django calls out the guy and shoots him. He falls next to the cross, dead. Classic stuff.

Django is this ghost like character, now you see him, now you don't, BANG! You're dead. Look and feel of this film is not like your typical spaghetti western, there is also some horror/gothic stuff thrown in.

To be honest, i was not that impressed by Anthony Steffen's performance. He lacks some of that big screen presence that is totally essential for these kind of roles. Now his character Django is somewhat shallow.

Luciano Rossi makes one of his biggest roles as the madman brother of one of the betraying officers. All the euro fans might wanna check out Kier-La Janisse's book about Luciano Rossi, "A Violent Professional, The Films of Luciano Rossi". Good book about one of the unsung heroes of Italian film industry.

All in all, pretty decent spaghetti western that has some horror/gothic stuff too. If you like this one, you might also wanna check out "And God said to Cain..." , starring Klaus Kinski, it also a revenge story with some horror feel thrown in.

Hitch-Hike (1977)

Couple (Franco Nero and Corinne Cléry) that has totally dysfunctional relationship is returning home from their camping trip. They stop to pick up a hitch-hiker (David Hess). They soon learn that the hitch-hiker is wanted criminal and he wants them to take him to Mexico. Travel through hell is about begin!

I really liked this movie, the leading trio (Nero,Cléry and Hess) do a tremendous jobs as odd traveling company. Nero broke his arm during the filming of Keoma just prior the filming of Hitch-Hike was about to start. So they had to change the script to explain why Nero has a cast on his arm and Cléry had to drive the car instead of Nero.

Sometimes this movie is labeled as giallo but this is actually a really good thriller. The twist in the end was also a good one.

Directed by Pasquale Festa Campanile

If You Meet Sartana Pray for Your Death (1968)

Couple of stagecoaches are robbed by two different gangs, a gang led by Morgan (Klaus Kinski) and another gang led by Lasky (William Berger). Both robberies go awry, Sartana kills all the Morgans men, except Morgan and Lasky's gang is killed by Lasky himself, but it turn out that the strongbox they robbed is full of stones and not gold. Morgan and Lasky team up to get Sartana out of their way.

I have to say that i didn't like this film. The main character was just too slick. Sort of poor man's version of the characters played usually by the great Lee Van Cleef. Kinski was as stable as ever, but that just was not enough to save the film. Lots of things happening all the time in this movie, everybody betraying everybody, everyone is after the gold. Sartana stepping in and killing the bad guys. It gets pretty confusing after a while...

Like i said this one was not my "bowl of spaghetti". Maybe i give it another spin sometime in future just to see if it gets any better when you have some kind of crasp of the story. Directed by Gianfranco Parolini.

Cut and Run (Inferno in diretta, 1985)

Reporter and her cameraman head into jungle to get the truth about military officer involved in the Jonestown massacre. They are also trying find the missing son of a TV producer. They get caught in the middle of violent drug wars and now they have fight for their survival. Welcome to inferno, baby!

I have say that i found this Deodato's film bit boring. Yes, it's violent as hell in that Deodato gut munching style, but all the violence seemed just little over the top and somewhat unnecessary. You can clearly see that Deodato tried to follow his own footsteps in the path he set with Cannibal Holocaust. All the scenes between these violent outbursts just seem...well, they a boring. There is also some actual footage from the Jonestown, the infamous interview with Jim Jones just couple of hours before the hell broke loose.

Michael Berryman (The Hills Have Eyes) plays psycho who commands his own little army of natives as they steal drugs from the drug plants. He looks as cute as ever...

If you want to know what Deodato's was up to in mid '80s you might want to take a shot at this, otherwise don't bother.