The Canal - much better than what I watched the other day. Ghostfilm from Ireland with a Dutch touch in the form of two Dutch actresses. I only read about that afterwards, which means the usual accents didn't bother me. The story is about David, a guy who works at the film archives. One day he gets to see a film from a murderscene in 1902, and it is at his house. His marriage is under strain already, because he suspects his wife to have an affair, but with this extra information, things get more complicated, because now the house seems to play a role in their lives, too. To deal with the impending doom, David goes to extremes. I liked this film. Atmosphere is great, camerawork was pretty original (a burial filmed from within the coffin), editing kept the pace up in a nice way and music was almost perfect. Acting is good too, especially David's character really gets under your skin. The scary moments were not accompanied by loud bangs for a change, which I loved. Not entirely original (some scenes were obviously "borrowed" from other horror titles) and also not really unpredictable plotwise, but very much enjoyable. Recommended.

Took a short break, but back to film now:

Slaughter - sounds like an extreme horror, but it is a blaxploitation with Jim Brown playing a guy called Slaughter, whose parents are being blown to bits by an autobomb. Him being a cop, he goes to extremes to find the perpetrators. No holds barred he jumps right into the action, with of course people dying around him but he is never being hit, he gets the girl and completes his mission after a lot of shooting, fighting and explosions. Music is nice and atmospheric, acting is so so, especially some of the "Italians" are not doing a great job imo. Nice blaxploitation, among the better 50% of the subgenre.

Godzilla 2000 - in this Godzilla film, the dinosaur is back as the threat to civilization. It visits Tokyo in order to destroy it, but then a UFO appears and starts stealing data from computer networks. The Japanese are trying to destory both monsters, but in the end, of course, they fight each other. The opening part is quyite spectacular, then you get a quiet middle part with a lot of scientists and military discussing the problems, and then you get the endfight. After the endfight there are 5 Japanese people who each put their morale to the story which is pretty awkward. The story was OK-ish, acting too except for the kid, who was annoying like usually in Japanese films. The alien only looked good when he was in his monstershape, all other shapes look too artificial because of limited cgi. If you have to choose between several Godzilla films, I'd pick an older one, this one didn't have anything really special imo.

Intimate Stranger - Deborah Harry plays Angel, a nightclub singer who also works as a phonesex voice in order to make some more money. One night she gets a call from a guy who is in the process of murdering a girl, and Angel has to listen in. She contatcs the police, and when they don't want to help her, a cop offers his help on a personal note. With some equipment and little bits and pieces of information, they are trying to find out who the guy on the phone was in order to stop him. They don't have unlimited time to do so, because the man is also hunting Angel. Pretty good thriller, very little to no gore, two songs by Harry (one of which is a Joplin cover). Enjoyable, but probably not up for a rewatch.

Hot Potato - bought a DVD with 4 blaxploitations on it, and this is one of them. Apparently it is the worst one, and I sincerely hope so, because this was kind of crappy to say the least. Jim "Black Belt Jones" Kelly stars as the main character who is being sent to Thailand to free the daughter of a US senator who has been kidnapped by a local crimelord. Together with Johnny Chicago and Rhino, a fat Texan of Italian ancestry, he goes on a mission to rescue the woman. Help is given by some local Thai women, one a policewoman and the other Rhino's accidental bride. In short, there is a lot of kung fu fighting going on, with Asians dropping like flies as soon as one of our heroes enters the screen. There are a million bad jokes in this one, and I never laughed, that's how bad they were. The only thing which gave me some good feeling was the 70s atmosphere which was drippin off the screen. As I said, I hope the others on this disc are better. Skip, please.

Created to Kill - aka Embryo. A 70s scifi with fetuses being tampered with so they can grow outside of the womb and become normal human beings. OK, that sounded interesting enough. After 105 minutes however, I found myself fallen asleep in my chair as this film was really really boring. Rock Hudson plays a scientist who used to work on theories of extra-uteral growth with his wife un til she died in a car accident. After he hits a Dobermann with his car, he brings the dog home and operates on her, tryi ng to save the unborn puppies. Of course, this is the trigger for him to restart his work on the controversial theories. After some slight success (one out of three puppies survives), he tries it again on a human fetus. Unbeknown to him, the dog turned out to be a vicious and sly killer, and the human who grows out of the extra-uteral fetus also doesn't really fit into society. She ages quickly too, and upon trying to find an antidote, Hudson finds out about her anomaly. The ending is quite cliche, but OK-ish nonetheless: it is the best part of the film. Especially the first part of this flick is boring to death, with Hudson sitting around in his too dark lab speaking into his voice recorder. Very forgettable film.

Fatal Frames - aka Fotogrammi mortali. 90s Italian film, resembling the giallo. Stefania Stella, an Italian singer (looking like a pornstar) is being promoted in the US by her agent (also looking like a pornstar) so she can have a video made by an American director, Alex Ritt (looking like a mix between a pornstar and an 80s rockstar). Ritt comes to Rome, but soon he sees one of the crew, a ballet dancer, being murdered by a strange killer with a mask and a machete on a location where they were shooting the video. He goes to the police, but upon arriving at the crimescene, there is no body and there are not races of any murder. Later, the police receives a tape on which the murder is being filmed. Ritt is being questioned of course, but he gets really angry about the fact that they see him as a possbile killer. A few days later, a new murder takes place and again there is no body and the police receive a tape with a film of the murder. The victim is again involved in making the video, and the location of the murder is also part of the locations for making the video, so the relation between the murders and the video are super obvious. Weird stuff ensues, with a seance for ghosts, parapsychologists (Linnea Quigley) and the FBI in the person of Donald Pleasance. The murders resemble an old American case which was dubbed "the videokiller", and that murderer was never caught. By now it should be clear for the experienced giallo watcher who the killer is, and I guessed it right indeed. I must say it wasn't too far fetched, as in some of the 70s giallos. The ending was therefore predictable, but also watchable. The film in it's entirety is too long (125 minutes!), there could have been several cuts made, especially towards the ending. No more victims in the last 40 minutes, just some superfluous character development which is out of place and too late and some obsolete red herrings. Effects were quite good, the kills were OK. What made this film enjoyable was it's sleazy-like badness, with Stefania Stella at the summit of it all. A bad Italian accent in her English, silicone lips and fake tits made her perfect fitting in this film. If you are an Itralo fan, or a giallo fan, you can give this a chance. Keep in mind that it is kind of bad, but in a funny way.

Cotton Comes to Harlem - a blaxploitation from 1970. I'm a bit confused here, because I always thought that Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song was he first blaxploitation ever, but that one is from 1971. So if someone knows more abouyt this, pls enlighten me On to this film. This was quite a solid actionfilm, with sarcastic humour when it comes to racial relations in 70s USA. The story is about a charismatic reverend who runs a "Back to Africa" campaign, but the money he collects for the trip is used for different means, and thus the black community in Harlem gets robbed. Two black cops, Ed and Digger are on his trail, but then an assault takes place with the mafia involved. Now several people are hunting each other, and they are all looking for a bale of cotton, because inside of it is the money of the black community (which was swindled by the reverend). I really liked this film, especially for it's urban black humour. There are also some car chases, many (fire)fights and a nice subplottwist in the end, which had me laughing. Recommended, even if you are not so much into blaxploitation.

RZ-9 - scifi film which made me think of Minority Report a bit, although this film can't even stand in it's shadow. In this film, people are being screened constantly for things that might mark them enemies of the state. Such enemies are tracked down, and then eliminated by supersoldiers called Erasers. For the tracking, the government uses drones, and they are being piloted from a central headquarters. One of the pilots is Patterson Endcott, and ome day he finds out that he is actually in the screening system, suspect of being a religious fanatic. He jams the system, goes home and flees, together with his sister Samantha. They end up being rescued by the resistance and now they have to make their way to Canada in order to be safe. This fil is being slashed to pieces in reviews, and yes, it is bad. But I was a little afraid that there would be nothing enjoyable in it, and that is not the case. I had fun watching the idiotic firefights where some people never get hit and some do. The cgi is actually quite OK, the drones look cool. Samantha is played by Morgan Obenreder and it is no punishment to have to look at her. It's not enough to make this a good film of course, and you should skip this if you want to see something meaningful. But as a brainless pastime, this fits quite OK.

Ubaldo Terzani Horror Show - a modern Italian horrorfilm, often referring to the glorious days of Bava, Argento and the like. The movie is filled to the brim with references (check the posters, the T-shirts and the verbal references). The story is about 25-year old Alessio Rinaldi, a talented director who wants to make splatter horror. His producer however, wants to sell, so the story must be improved before Rinaldi can make his film. To achieve this, the producer sends Rinaldi to Ubaldo Terzani, a horror author living in Turin, so they can write a synopsis together. At first, Rinaldi just thinks Terzani is a bit of a strange guy, like most artists are. But after a while, he discovers, bit by bit, that Terzani is more than just "a little strange", and that it might be even dangerous to be around him. I hadn't seen a Gabriele Albanesi film before, but this one makes me want to see more. The storyline is quite original, and what I really liked is that it isn't so superficial. For example, when Alessio's girlfriend comes over (Terzani invited her), she asks Terzani how the story is, and he says that they are at an important point in the story, almost at the end. Nobody has died yet, but it will happen soon and there will be a bloody ending. In fact, he is not just talking about the story they are writing: he is also talking about the storyline of this film itself. I love that kind of stuff. Apart from that and the numerous references, I liked the atmosphere and the gore too. Acting is great, especially by the guy who played Terzani. Highly recommended!

Una notte di cinema Italiana

The Night Child - aka Il Medaglione Insanguinato. Massimo Dallamano made this pasta-possession film with Nicoletta Elmi starring as Emilia, the daughter of a British documentarymaker. She accompanies her father and her nanny (her mother died in the past) to Spoleto in Italy, so he can shoot some film on demons, the subject of his documentary. He gets help fom a countess, and through her he finds out about a painting which is somehow cursed. He really wants to use the painting, despite the warnings of the countess, but when he films it anyway, the nanny suddenly dies. The countess senses the danger, and urges them all to leave Italy and never come back, but since the documentarymaker doesn't believe in supernatural powers, he returns to Spoleto after the funeral of the nanny. In the final scenes of the film you get to see whether this was good idea or not. A very typical Italo film from the 70s just the way I love them. Catchy score, with a tune and it's 1000 variations. Several plotlines intertwined, great atmosphere. Not so much gore, but it wasn't needed. Recommended, highly if you are an Italo fan.

Top Sensation - a mentally retarded 20-year old boy needs to get laid according to his mother, so she goes on a boattrip with her yacht and brings along a couple of sensual people: Aldo and his wife Paula, and Ulla, some sort of a prostitute. Ulla is played by Edwige Fenech and Paula by Rosalba Neri. Especially Neri is steaming hot in this film, the sweat almost drips off your screen. While Ulla is being put in the boy's cabin, Paula and Aldo are having sex and thus the boat is beached because Aldo doesn't pay attention to steering it anymore (which is totally understandable). Now they are next to an island, and the boy escapes the yacht, running onto the island. There, he finds a woman and is attracted to her. On the boat, she is being pimped by Neri and Fenech, and she is being fed a lot of alcohol, in order to let her have sex with the boy. Unfortunately, the 3woman has a husband and he is coming to the yacht too. Now they have to make sure the boy is gonna have sex and in the meantime keep the man busy enough so he won't notice. Although there is little actual sex in this film, it is pretty sensual (or sleazy, depending on your level of taste). The storyline is a bit shallow, but it's not a film in which everything is an excuse to make another sexscene. Acting is quite good in this one, especially by the people on the boat. If you are used to Italian exploitation, this is along it's lines, but just a bit different.

Wild Beasts - aka Belve Feroci. PCP, a drug, is being put into the water of a German town and the zoo gets it. The animals go wild and escape, ravaging the town. An animal expert and a reporter go out and try to save the day, but for many people they will be too late. The expert is played by Lorraine De Selle, known from House on the Edge of the Park. Her daughter gets caught up in a dangerous situation because her classmates accidentally drank some of the contaminated water and go crazy too, now. This film has a very short storyline, it is actually a series of shots about animals running wild in a city. Some of them are a bit dull, some of them are cool (like the cheetah chasing a car) and all of them are in the dark. Although other Italian films are infamous for their animal cruelty, this one is quite unknown but it realy takes the cake when it comes to abusing animal life. The extreme scene where rats are being torched with flamethrowers is something quite unheard of, and I haven't read anything about this scene being fake. I can't imagine the other animals (lions, panthers, elephants, etc.) had fun making this film either. If you want something weird with lots of animals, check this one out.

Sister, Sister - horror/thriller from 1987 starring Eric Stoltz and Jennifer Jason Leigh. In the Louisiana swamps, two sisters Charlotte and Lucy run a hotel in an old mansion. Charlotte wants to marry the local sheriff, but something is withholding her. One day, they get a visitor from Washington, Matt. Lucy falls in love with him, but just like Charlotte can't marry the sheriff, Lucy can't really go oin with a relationship with Matt. Charlotte is making sure that it doesn't get out of hand. But why are they not going thorugh? And why is Etienne, a local trapper being a bit protective of them? When Lucy's dog gets killed, things start to get rolling, and the sisters' past is slowly but steadily revealing their secrets. Acting is good, atmosphere is OK. Most horror is psychological, so don't expect a gorefest here. Actually only the final scene has something really horrorish, the rest is more thriller-like. Enjoyable, but not a masterpiece. Check it out if you come across it, it seems to be pretty rare.

Hell up in Harlem - this being a sequel to Black Caesar, the film starts out with some familiar scenes: Tony Gibbs in the cab being chased by policemen. After a short while, the film takes a different turn, though. The DA in NY, Di Angelo, wants Gibbs out for good. First, he tries to kill Gibbs' father, but when that fails, he makes a deal with Gibbs. This results in Gibbs being the number one gangleader, cleaning up Harlem from pushers and dealers. After a while, though, Di Angelo wants to push out Gibbs too. One man in his crew, Zack, wants more than just being a warrior in Gibbs' gang. So when Gibbs goes away to California, Zack takes over and works together with Di Angelo. Gibbs is furious and swears to take back what's his. Slick blaxploitation, lots of action (the number of dead people is pretty high) and nice music. A worthy sequel, recommended.

Slaughter's Big Rip-Off - the sequel to Slaughter, with music by James Brown. Slaughter is having some fun with friends in Mexico when he is the target of an unorthodox hit: it involves an aroplane and a machinegun. People die, but of course Slaughter is not among them. When he finds out who is behind the hit, he sets out to get the man, but a policeman bends his way in order to go for a certain list in the man's safe. Slaughter seeks helkp from several other brothers and eventually the mission will take them to various locations. The plot is quite nice and takes some cliche but well executed turns. It is never really orioginal, although I really liked the role of the black cop in this one. Subtle, but clever. Nice blaxploitation, as good as the original at least.

Godzilla vs Spacegodzilla - a project is launched to make use of telepathic powers of a medium, so she can control Godzilla via a module which has to be fired into Godzilla's neck. Two soldiers do this job, but the medium gets a supernatural message from two midget fairy elves (red glowing tinkerbells who talk simultaneously) that Godzilla needs to besaved against a threat from outer space. If Godzilla is destroyed, the same fate will strike earth. Of course the threat is Spacegodzilla, a far out spacey version of Godzilla with crystallite spikes on his back and two huge crystals on his shoulders. He can morph into a crystal shape and fly through space. Oh, there is Mothra too somehow, flying around like it's high on dope and dropping sparkles of light. This was supposed to be the cause of the birth of Spacegodzilla (yeah, try to find the logic and go crazy while you do it). The two soldiers continue their job, with help from a guy who lost his brother in a fight against Godzilla years back, so he has a grudge against the monster. They use a robotic machine which can be separated into a land- and an airmachine, called Mogera. He has to hold his grudge, though, because Spacegodzilla has to be destroyed first. Of course it is not a surprise what the outcome of this film will be. The morale is layed thick on the plot, talking about space pollution causing huge dragons, etc. "maybe this can be warning to human". The fights are pretty rare for a film with this length (108 mins), but they are quite spectacular, which is credit to Spacegodzilla which is quite a cool monster. The way to destroy it is surprisingly easy, though. From the 90s Godzilla films this was one of the lesser annoying, although it was still too long.

Hands of Steel - aka Atomic Cyborg aka Vendeta dal Futuro. This is Sergio Martino's "how to steal a movie and get away with it", as this is a blatant rip-off of Terminator. Of course it isn't half as good, but that's exactly what I like about it. Daniel Greene stars as Paco Queruak, a cyborg sent to kill a certain popular environmentalist. Face to faace with the blind and wheelchaired man, he can't finish the job, although he was trained and programmed to do it. Now he has to run, both from the olice (who want to to catch him as the assailant) and his producers/trainers (who want to know why he didn't go through with the plan). Daniel Greene knows two facial expresions: neutral and angry and he uses them extensively. This is hilarious in the scenes which are supposed to be lovescenes: Janet Agren, not too shabby I'd say, snuggles up to him, but he keeps displaying his neutral face, even when she is about to kiss him. Apart from these castmembers there are several Italo regulars, like John Saxon, George Eastman and Claudio Cassinelli, who died in a helicopter crash while making this film. Effects are so so, but they ive the film even more 80s Italo charm. I loved the music, too. Really enjoyable Italo scifi flick. Recommended for the fans.

Attila - mmm, a peplum (sword and sandal), what will it be like? Well, it tried to be serious and succeeded for the most part. With a stellar cast (Anthony Quinn and Sophia Loren among others), this was meant to be for a big audience. The story is somewhat uninteresting: Attila and Roman officers negotiate a new alliance, but Attila actually wants war all the time. He rules the Huns together with his much more peaceful brother Bleda, so in order to get what he wants, he needs to kill his own brother. Then he attacks Rome, but eventually he is stopped by a long Christian column with the pope at it's head. This brings us to the point of christyian propaganda, of which there is plenty. Especially the final shot with the cross lightening up in the sky is asking for buckets. It's also historically incorrect btw, the symbol of the cross came into use after the time of Attila. Well, nevermind, this film wasn't meant to be a history piece in the first place. Good points are Loren's boobs and some fighting scenes, bad points are the meager duels and the superfake background paintings.

Alien Factor 2 - after having taken a break from filming becaue Blood Massacre was such a pita to make, Don Dohler returned to the set one more time to make this film. The story is what you might expect from a Dohler film: not too complicated. The monster (alien) is actually the best looking creature in all Dohler films, although I must admit it has been quite a while (and also quite some beers) since I saw The Alien Factor (pat one, that is). It shoots laserbeams like it's supposed to. The humans act dumb, stupid and/or arrogant, except for two lady cops, one of whom is dressed in a shirt and trousers resembling the colour of the police uniform, lol. Dialogue and acting are hard to swallow if you try to take this film seriously, so here is mjy advice: don't. Just watch and have some fun, it's just 75 minutes so make the most of it. Recommended for bad moviefans.

The Erotic Rites of Frankenstein - aka La Maldicion de Frankenstein. Jess Franco stars as the doctor's assistant in one of the first scenes of his own film. This is a Franco remake of the Frankenstein story, with Cagliostro, a wizard, stealing the Frankenstein monster after having the doctor killed by one of his minions, a half woman half vulture creature. Now the daughter of the doctor wants to finish his experiments, but of course she needs the monster (who is sprayed silver but they missed some spots behind his ears) for that. Not so easy, as Cagliostro has many minions, including creatures which resemble the Blind Dead from the De Ossorio movies. In this (German) version of the film I watched, there were also some weird scenes with a certain girl named Esmeralda, but I failed to see what she had to do with the main plot. In Cagliostro's castle, all prisoners are tied up against the wall and being subjected to perverse acts which of course some S&M, like you would expect from Franco. Falling on the spikes however wouldn't have hurt much as they bend over when you step on them. Atmospheric and nonsensical, this is a recommended film for fans of Eurotrash.

Zombie Bloodbath 3: Zombie Armageddon - it had been a while since I had watched parts one and two, but I recall them being a it boring, but also somewhat entertaining for a low budget film. This one is along the same lines. The first 30 minutes are actually quite boring, there are some highschool students who are in detention, and there are two guys doing the schoolradio broadcast. Then the zombies come, because they find a spaceshuttle in the basement (yea,h why not) and it has infected on board. Together with two black celebtrities they fight off the zombies as best they can. Unfortuantely, there are only two people who can act a little, the rebelious guy (he gets killed as one of the first, which lowers the standards of acting even more) and the black celebrity with the bandana. The whole spacew thing is quite funny, but also suiperweird and it never makes any sort of sense. This makes the film actually more enjoyable, until the terrible ending where they do a cheap trick with a timewarp. Super bummer. A recommendation for the part of the film between the ~30th and the ~80th minute. The rest is rubbish.

Black Belt Jones - Jim Kelly is Black Belt Jones, a black Bruce Lee who also makes monkey noises like Lee when fighting his mixed martial arts. He has to save a karate school from being torn down, and therefore he starts raising money by accepting a job to infiltrate in a mafia headquarters. Also starring Gloria Hendry and Scatman Crothers, this film has only a few blaxploitation elements, but it's a quite enjoyable film anyway. The fights are OK but predictable of course, the storyline is OK-ish and the acting is average. What's not so great is the music, it's kind of uninteresting compared to other "black" films. This is one of the better mixes between blaxploitation and martial arts film, though, even when they never visit Asia in this one I guess this is for fans only.

Carnage - I expected a slasher, as it was a double feature with Redeemer: Son of Satan aka Class Reunion Massacre (which I'm gonna watch in the near future). Buit instead this was a haunted house film, supposedly made to cash in on the success of Polktergeist. This film is by far not as good as Poltergeist, actually this is a very bad film. Fans of bad movies should certainly check this one out. Why? It starts out with a very dramatic scene about a murder-suicide committed by the groom of a newlywed couple, the reason is explained later. This is the cause of the bride being a ghost in the house moving stuff at first but slowly and steadily becoming more aggressive and violent towards the new inhabitants of the house (also a newlywed couple). The moving stuff part is quite boring, but you can already have a laugh at the uselessness of it: the ghost moves stuff which is out of sight for the people living in the house, and thus not scary in those cases. It just makes the people wonder where they left stuff. The violent part is much better (or worse, if you expect to see a serious film): it has continuity goofs, lots of dry ice and some very hilarious killscenes, of which I shall give an example. A priest is being shown around the house by the couple to see if it's haunted. The priest just wanders around not doing anything in particular and he concludes that the house seems normal. Then the ghost appears and tries to hurt them. After a not really exciting scene, they end up just outside the house, in relative safety. Actually, the priest is in a great position as he can't be attacked by the ghost anymore. But then, he inexplicably steps up the stairs again, in front of the door opening. Of course, the ghost found a meatcleaver somewhere and is throwing it in the general direction of the door. We follow the meatcleaver and it ends up in the priest's shoulder, but when the camera switches to a frontview of the poor man, the cleaver is in his head! Now he dies, of course and the ghost has another victim on it's kill-list. Most, if not all other killscenes are really fake and/or hilarious. Highly recommended for bad moviefans.

Plague - survivalhorror from Australia. Just like in many other films, a plague has spread and most people are infected by it,. A simple bite and you will become an infected person, lusting for blood. The word zombie is never used, but these infected have all the properties you expect in a zombie. A small group (three women and two men) are holding out in a barn in the countryside. There is some strife over whether to stay or to leave. One woman, Evie, wants to stay because her husband/boyfriend John has still not arrived at the barn. After this is concluded, the barn gets visited first by a group of infected, and then by a lone man called Charlie. At first he seems to be a salvation, but soon he shows that there are also other sides to his person. Although this is not a bad film (stolry and acting are decent enough), it wasn't something to remember, imo. The whole thing was just not interesting enough. Nice shots, and quite a nice development of the plot, but it was kind of predictable (except for the final scenes of the film) and therefore I would not watch it again. Crude message to mankind, btw.

Class Reunion Massacre - aka Redeemer! Son of Satan. 70s slasher with all the usual ingredients. It looks like this film has been the inspiration for films such as Pledge Night and Slaughter High, as the storyline is quite similar to those films. What's different is that the killer is acting as an agent for Satan, although this is only a minor part of the plot. The victims are three girls and three boys who all "live in sin, which we see in the introduction. They act pretty stupid, because they know they are the only people at the reunion, but apart from stating the fact, they don't do anything about it. The kills are not so great, we see a burning, a shooting, a drowning, etc but they all look a bit uninspired. I laughed a few times because of the characters doing something dumb, and it isn't really surprising to see that most castmembers never made another movie. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Riot in a Women's Prison - Italian made WIP film with several cliches, but also some originality and surrealism. Martine, a French tourist, gets framed while on vacation in Italy: drugs is being put in her pocket and she gets booked for possession. She ends up in a women's prison where the regime is hard and the women are led strictly by nuns. The cliches are the scenes with the cellmates, the collective showerscene and the inevitable riot. The originiality is in the nuns and the fact that the riot is not successful. The surrealism is in the fact that we get a scene during the riot where we see a filmcrew on the rooftop: is that the director himself up there, or what are they doing really? The ending is again not so very original, but with enough nudity and a tad of violence, this one is pretty OK. For Italo fans and fans of the genre this will be satisfying.

The Reptile - a Hammer film, but without the famous faces such as Lee or Cushing. It shows that the studio could have films without them which are still very well acted. Of course the film is atmospheric and the settings are well chosen. The music is dramatic, but not overused really. The story is pretty predictable, you don't need to wait until the final scenes to know what the reptile is all about. The film is not really scary, somehow monsterfilms from this age never manage to be that, but it was a nice and enjoyable watch.

I wanted to watch Conan the Destroyer, because I'm not sure if I have ever seen that one, but after a few tries and some cleaning it turned out that the person who sold this to me was selling a broken product. Boohoo. So, ordered another one and changed plans. So now I watched:

Trouble Man - have you watched the A-team in your youth (or later)? Also in awe of BA, played by Mr T? Well, this guy must have watched Trouble Man, because this is where the main character sports the name Mr T. This guy is a private detective, and he makes a lot of money doing jobs for both the upper- and the underworld. Not set in Harlem for a change (but in LA), this blaxploitation ranks among the best ones, although it is not that well known. That may be because there are no really big names playing in this film, but acting is great in this one anyway. Music is great too, it was all written by Marvin Gaye and it fits the film very nicely. The storyline is also not too cliche, the plot is actually quite interesting: two guys organizing illegal crap games are being stuck up almost all evenings, and now they ask Mr T for help. It doesn't take long for T to find out that this is no simple job: a rivalling gang is on the verge of getting into a war with the crapgame guys, or is it the other way around? And how about the police? They get involved when people start to die, so T has to juggle with many balls to solve all puzzles. "T has one thing going for him, and that's his cool, and he's got a lot of it". Recommended, especially for fans of the genre.

Lisa and the Devil - the Bava film which got re-edited into The House of Exorcism. Bava said himself about this: "The House of Exorcism is not my film, even though it bears my name. It is like the situation whereby a cuckolded man is found to have a son that is not his but has his name but there is nothing he can do about it." I just re-read my review of HoE and indeed, the differences are striking. No possession at all in Lisa and the Devil, instead it is more a mysterious film than an actual horror. Lisa is on a tour in a town where she is being shown a fresco of the devil, taking away the dead. She is drifting away from the group and has a weird encounter with a man who reminds her of the fresco she just saw. Trying to return to the square where the fresco was, she gets lost and meets a person who knows her, but she doesn't know him. A minute later he falls to his death. That night, she gets picked up by a car and stays overnight in a castle, where she again meets the weird man who is the butler there. There are also a blind countess and her son, who falls in love with Lisa, as she reminds him of Elena, a woman who had lived there before. Many questions rise for Lisa, and after the driver of the car is murdered, things get even more mysterious. Who is the butler? And why is he carrying around livelike dolls? Is the countess a source of evil? Is her son really in lvoe with Lisa or does he have other plans? And what about the family Lisa was travelling with in the car? This film is one of the later Bava films and the plot is spun out quite well. I really liked the fact that there was always somethiung you didn't know, and so the mystery kept being there all along. The image was great (I watched the Arrow release) and the music was cool. The language sometimes changed from Italian to English, I guess because the Italian tapes were incomplete. Beautiful film, like you might expect from Bava. I recommend everyone to watch this instead of The House of Exorcism if you have to make a choice.

Countess Perverse - a typical Jess Franco film. This means the plot is really superficial, there is loads of nudity, sleazy music and nice images of the Mediterranean. The quality of the DVD (by Mondo Mcabro) is excellent, but the "optional" subtitles aren't really optional. So if you speak French, you have to try to ignore them. This film has some nice B-movie moments, like when a total stranger walks relaxed across the beach in the background while the scene tries to get across that the island is a murderous arena, and also when the shadow of a crewmember is cast on a wall close to the count's house (lower right corner). The "story" is about a count (played by Franco regular Howard Vernon) and a countess living on an island, their hobby is hunting people and eat their flesh. To get victims, they have two employees on another island close by who lure girls in to drop them off on the island to be hunted. That's the plot. Now, in order to lure them to the island, there has to be a lot of sex. And when on the island, there still has to be a lot of sex. The film runs for 75 minutes, but if you would cut out all sexscenes, it would be done in ~20 minutes. Gefundenes fressen for Franco fans. If you are new to Franco, this is a great example of how he makes films. Recommended for bad moviefans.

Conan the Destroyer - after the previous attempt to watch this, I received my new copy in the mail so I could watch it. I was curious to see if I could notice whether I had seen this film already before or not. The film starts with Conan praying at an altar, in the presence of Malak, the thief. This made the impression on me that it continued where part one left off, but since that's some 15 years ago since I've seen that one, I'm not 100% sure. Conan gets an offer from Taramis the queen: she will revive his dead wife when he brings Jehnna, Taramis' niece, safely back to the palace after having fulfilled a quest for a magic horn. This horn needs to be placed into a statue of a god, so that it will live. Then the person who put it there will become the most powerful person on earth. Conan takes the job and he accompanies Jehnna together with the captain of the guard and Malak. On the way they collect two more people, a wizard and a female warrior. They do the quest and of course they run into trouble, and there is a plot to kill Conan, and, etc.etc. If you have ever seen an adventure film or a fantasyfilm, you know what this is gonna be about. The film itself is quite OK, entertaining enough at least. Acting is OK too, although I hadn't heard Arnolds 80s accent in a long time so it made me laugh again. Effects are reasonable, but the rocks are obviously fake when they travel through the tunnel. OK film, you might watch it for reasons of nostalgia. For bad moviefans there are way "better" fantasy films out there.