Jose Larraz's Vampyres (1974)

There's a light on in the castle, and behind the curtains, two young women lay on the bed, kissing and caressing. The door squeaks open and a tall, sinister shadow, donning a hat, points a revolver at the two and shoots. The viewer is next treated to a colony of bats flying, while the uber-cool, progressive title theme by James Kenelm Clarke plays in Jose Larraz's Vampyres (1974).

A gentleman arrives at a hotel and requests a room. The old clerk behind the desk says that he recognizes the gentleman from a previous visit. He's mistaken.

A young couple is driving in the countryside with their trailer camper in tow. The man driving sees a brown-haired woman, wrapped in a black cloak, standing at the side of the road. She is the same brown-haired woman from the opening scene of the film. The woman passenger sees also the brown-haired woman but also sees, hiding behind a tree, a blonde woman, also in a black cloak. The blonde woman is also from the initial scene of Vampyres.

So what's up? Within a few minutes of the film, Larraz introduces the five main characters and draws them all together at the film's main location, a large, castle-like house in the country. The young couple, John (Brian Deacon) and Harriet (Sally Faulkner), pull their trailer into the shadow of the large house and make camp for the night. John believes the house is abandoned, but it, nonetheless, frightens Harriet. She cannot get the two women, whom she saw earlier, off of her mind. What were they doing?

A passing car picks up the young woman with the brown hair, later revealed to be Fran (Marianne Morris), who leads him to the large house. Harriet notices a light on in the house and hears a scream. She awakens, believing someone is outside of the camper, but John believes that she's just having a bad dream. The following morning, with ambulance sirens wailing, the same car that picked up Fran is shown turned over and its driver dead. Fran is again waiting at the side of the road and is picked up by the room-renting gentleman named Ted (Murray Brown). Ted drives Fran to the large house and she invites him in. Harriet watches as the two enter the house. Fran leads Ted through the interior of the house, which is decrepit and dirty, to a cozy chamber within. Ted whines a little bit, but Fran puts him at ease with a little wine from her cellar. She gives Ted a serious rogering, and the two fall asleep. Ted awakens in the middle of the night, hearing voices and a little woozy from the wine, and looks over at Fran. She is staring at him with her eyes wide open, yet Fran does not bat an eye when he waves his hand in front of her face. The next morning, Ted awakens, looking a little pale. He checks his wallet (cash still there) and looks at his arm, where there is a nasty gash. Fran is nowhere to be found.Jose Ramon Larraz is truly a unique film maker and no one makes films quite like him. Larraz, like Jean Rollin, loves the traditional Gothic settings and its appropriate characters, like vampires, and mixing them with his own sensibilities and atmosphere. Larraz also doesn't mind getting nasty in his movies. For example, completely sensible Ted gets his wounds treated by John and Harriet and decides to wait in his car for Fran to arrive. Fran arrives with the blonde woman, Miriam (Anulka), and a new fellow who picked them up, Rupert (Karl Lanchbury). The four go up stairs and drink a little wine. Fran gives Ted another serious shagging and while Ted's sleeping, Fran licks and drinks from Ted's arm wound. Fran hears a noise out in the hall and investigates where she finds Miriam, who's a little wobbly and with her face covered in blood. In Miriam's bedroom, Rupert's drenched in blood and the two attack him like sharks in a frenzy. While the scene isn't gut-munching, zombie-gory, it is extremely brutal and unsettling. The final fifteen minutes or so of Vampyres gets pretty nasty, also, in terms of violence.Larraz also shows quite a bit of flesh from Fran and Miriam in Vampyres's numerous sex scenes. While Marianne Morris and Anulka are gorgeous women, neither appears comfortable nude on screen and most scenes come off as artificial. After the Rupert bloodletting, the two bathe together under a slow shower. Miriam warns Fran to be careful in regards to Ted--don't let herself get too close to him. Miriam and Fran kiss and caress, but unfortunately there is nothing sexy about it. These two actresses are not comfortable and are going through the motions. Special notice goes to Murray Brown's Ted, because he is truly one of the most disgusting on-screen lovers that I have ever seen. Ted's not a bad-looking chap, but his moves are totally repellent. When he kisses beautiful Morris, Brown looks like he is slobbering all over her. Brown jumps around in the bed, almost like its a trampoline, and I wouldn't have been surprised if Morris's Fran told him to get the eff out of her bedroom, pronto.

Save the bizarre nasty bits of sex and violence, Larraz really shines with his unique atmosphere and vision in Vampyres. A lot of the initial set-up and mystery could be attributed to incompetence, but Larraz is creating a disorienting, surreal tale. He has a real eye for capturing the eyes of his characters. Morris and Anulka, who both give good performances, really are hypnotizing when Larraz lets the camera linger on their faces. With subtle looks and glances, both are able to convey sensuality and menace. Some of the more surreal touches of Vampyres, for example, like the images of the black-cloaked pair running through the cemetery at dawn to find solace at their crypt are captivating. Harriet, who spends the film with a growing obsession towards the pair, has the most bizarre first meeting with the two. As Harriet is painting a portrait of the house, Fran approaches her and becomes angry at seeing the painting. Fran mumbles some esoteric words and seemingly gives her a "blessing."

In a lot of ways, it is difficult for me to describe the attraction of Vampyres, beyond the sex and violence. Larraz's unique film making is the only source to which I can cite and which is also akin to Jess Franco and Jean Rollin's dreamy, freaky, and hypnotizing films. If you're a fan of films of a more poetic rather than rational film logic, like me, then Vampyres is a film very much worth seeing.

Brad Anderson's Session 9 (2001)

Poor Gordon (Peter Mullan). He's tired. Sitting in his work truck in a truly universal pose, he sips his coffee, because his newborn baby, Emma, is not sleeping well. Compounding problems is his job: his hazmat crew needs one desperately; so a successful bid, at all costs, to remove the asbestos from Danvers Mental Hospital is of the highest priority. Of course, Phil (David Caruso), his crew captain, is going to remind him of that in his passive-aggressive, "if I were running things, things would be different" way. Danvers is old and looms large with an older history, but that's really not on Gordon's mind. However, Danvers is certainly thinking about Gordon's mind, as an ominous voice greets Gordon, while walking the halls of the old psycho ward. The supernatural meets the psychological in Brad Anderson's Session 9 (2001).

With a story that is at least as old as Henry James's The Turn of the Screw (1898) and a look and atmosphere influenced by Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980), Session 9 is a film that is both elegantly simple and simply elegant. Gordon's crew does get the gig to clean up Danvers, only after he seriously underbids to do the work in one week (and gives a slight sympathy plea) to the organizer. The one-week time frame creates the framework of the narrative, as each day increasingly becomes darker in both tone and visuals. After a short yet integral scene of Gordon arriving home to his baby girl and wife with flowers to celebrate, the film cuts to the first day, with the hum of the generator, as the crew begins work. Mike (Stephen Gevedon; also co-writer) is a law-school dropout, who secretly has an obsession with Danvers's dark past. Hank (Josh Lucas) is a lazy, smart-assed, wannabe gambler, who has stolen away Phil's girlfriend. Finally, there's young Jeff (Brendan Sexton III), sporting a serious mullet and not knowing a damn thing. After Phil tells the crew at lunch that the gig will last a week with a cash bonus for its on-time completion, Mike tells a story about some of the real "horrors" that went on in Danvers during its heyday. As the crew goes back to work, Danvers begins to work its spell upon them. Mike finds in the basement a box of old recordings of a patient's, Mary Hobbes, psychiatric sessions. Hobbes had a multiple-personality disorder, which manifests itself in three other personalities, beyond her own. Mike begins listening to the first session and over the course of the week, he takes every opportunity he gets to avoid working and listen to them. The sessions end with the titular tape: they are genuinely horrifying and engrossing, because the sessions come off as real. Hearing only the quiet and rational doctor attempt to counsel his patient, as he works through each session to get Mary to talk about, presumably, a childhood murder, is unnervingly creepy. Each of the personalities are revealed, and by the end of the film, the final personality not only draws the film together but kind of explains the goings on. The session tapes are a second story within Session 9 that drives the main narrative, seamlessly.Hank finds an old coin while roaming the basement catacombs, spraying the ducts with the "red slime." In fact, Hank finds several of them, coming from a endless fountain out of the wall (which is shown cleverly to have its origin in the morgue). One evening, in the film's only night scene, Hank returns to Danvers to loot his find. In Session 9's most traditional "haunted house" sequence, Anderson creates real tension and the film's few jump scares, as Hank is chased (?) through the corridors by a shadowy figure. Hank doesn't show up to work the following day, and Phil is not surprised. Phil and Hank do not like each other, but Gordon thinks something else is going on. The work at Danvers is becoming more stressful over the week, and Gordon is acting stranger. On Thursday, clueless Jeff climbs the stairs to find Hank, standing at the top, and the film perfectly escalates to its conclusion.Session 9 is a character-driven film, and no character stands out more than the location, the Danvers Mental Institution. Like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining, the location has its own personality, and Anderson devotes the film's initial exposition to a long tour of the facility. Danvers is a genuinely real location, and it's authenticity is essential to Session 9's success. Anderson shoots his film wide, a la The Shining, with panning shots gliding from room to room or down a corridor. Anderson also makes good use of his montage imagery, filling them with random shots, which are all the more creepier, perhaps, because of their randomness. Peter Mullan as Gordon paints quite the portrait of his character: over the course of the film, Gordon's character shifts between sinister intensity and pathetic and crying, like a lost child. David Caruso's Phil is totally over-the-top, almost like a parody, but I can't imagine Caruso's acting in any other way. In any regard, Caruso's performance works as the whining Phil. Josh Lucas, as Hank, is perfectly annoying at times, but also his dialogue is often quite funny. Brendan Sexton's Jeff is just plain funny-looking. His character has a genuine fear of the dark, and in one of the film's best visual sequences, Jeff is literally being chased by the dark. Kudos, also to Sexton for his performance.

Finally, Brad Anderson did a splendid job directing Session 9, which he also co-wrote and edited. He shows a real artistic visual eye, which he's developed further with little-seen and wrongfully ignored The Machinist (2004) and Transsiberian (2008). He makes great use of audio with music by Climax Golden Twins, which is kind-of experimental and eccentric combined with traditional music, while odd screeches and humming tones fill the transitional sequences. Perhaps his best achievement in Session 9 are the session tapes: it really says something in a visual medium, when the artist is able to capture dread, through only the sound of characters' voices.

If I were to list the best horror films of this decade, today, then Session 9 would be a serious contender for number one. On that note, if you haven't seen this film, then make seeing Session 9 priority one.

Pupi Avati's The House of The Laughing Windows (1976)

A giallo in sheep's clothing, Pupi Avati's The House of the Laughing Windows was released in 1976 and presumably set during that year; however, Avati gives the viewer very few cues that this is the case. The titular house is from an earlier era, and its mysterious occupants generated quite a few secrets, which are plaguing the living, today."My colors, my colors...they run hot in my veins" are the opening lines by an unknown narrator, spoken over a blurry, brown-hued opening sequence, where a bound man is being stabbed by two, dressed in white. The film cuts to the view from a ferry, where young Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) is literally and figuratively crossing into a unknown world. His eye catches beautiful Francesca (Francesca Marciano) aboard the vessel, and she's the new school teacher. Stefano, greeted by the mayor, Solmi (Bob Tonelli), and his driver, Coppola (Gianni Cavina), arrives at the small Italian village to restore a painting in the local church, which has either been recovered or recently ruined by someone. The painting's artist was a local resident, no longer living, named Legnani. Upon first glimpse of the painting, Stefano is captivated, as what is shown is horrifying: a pale man in extreme agony, his torso filled with knives, while at his side debris covers the rest of the fresco, hiding possibly the portrait's assailants.The village is quiet, as are the residents. Stefano goes to the local hotel, where he receives a strange and threatening phone call telling him to leave. Stefano meets an old friend, Antonio (Giulio Pizzirani), at the town's only restaurant. Antonio has discovered "the strangest story ever" about a "house with laughing windows." Antonio promises to tell Stefano all that he has learned, but he never gets the chance. One evening, frantically Antonio calls Stefano and asks to meet him in Stefano's hotel room. As Stefano arrives, Antonio is seen falling from the window, where behind the curtains, the shadow of someone lingers. With his friend's death and the mysterious circumstances around the church's fresco and its artist, Stefano is finally motivated to uncover the mystery at all costs.Pupi Avati is by no means an Italian genre director, but The House of the Laughing Windows has quite a cult following by genre fans. Also with Zeder (1983) and Arcane Sorcerer (1996), Avati proves himself to be an extremely adept film maker in regards to creating an engrossing and intriguing mystery; an atmosphere of dread and foreboding; and visuals, both beautiful and horrifyingly mesmerizing. For example, subsequent to Antonio's death, Stefano must leave the hotel, because an important guest is arriving and that guest takes Stefano's room (which is revealed later to be untrue). Stefano is gratefully housed somewhere else, a villa in the countryside, where a decrepit, dying woman resides alone. Avati treats the viewer to a brilliant tracking sequence from Stefano's P.O.V. through an overgrown trail, and as the leaves scrape of the side of the camera, the villa is revealed in the daylight tinged in darkness and decay. The villa is also covered with bizarre and haunting frescoes, and at night, shadows make noises and unwelcome visitors come and go. The details of the remaining mystery should remain hidden, although I will say that it does end unpredictably and is quite satisfying.Avati also proves himself to be quite adept at creating drama. The blossoming romance between Francesca and Stefano is a welcome addition, and the scenes between the two actors seem real and natural. One of the best characters to develop throughout The House of the Laughing Windows is Coppola, the driver for the mayor. At the onset of the film, I thought that he would be another peripheral character in the village; however, his character becomes increasingly important to the plot and to the drama. Gianni Cavina gives an excellent performance as Coppola (he also co-wrote the screenplay). Cavina conveys a lot of the sadness and emotion in the film, especially in an interesting scene, where he tells Stefano about his initial meeting with Legnani. Lino Capolicchio carries The House of the Laughing Windows very well, as he is able to perform with both a youthful innocence and a reckless, impulsive abandon. Francesca Marciano, as Francesca, is always captivating on screen. She is absolutely beautiful and her performance is pitch-perfect.Pupi Avati's The House of the Laughing Windows, in my opinion, is equal to the best work of Mario Bava and Dario Argento in terms of cinematography (by Pasquale Rachini) and in atmosphere. The film has the framework of a giallo (a mystery investigated by an obsessive amateur sleuth) without all of the flourishes (no black gloves, not a lot of sexuality, nor overtly bloody violence). The House of the Laughing Windows is a captivating and rare film: an old school mystery that actually delivers. See it.

Michele Massimo Tarantini's The Hard Way (1987)

If I were to have discovered Michele Massimo Tarantini's The Hard Way (1987) when I was ten, then I would have traded my red Rambo headband for a bottle of Vitalis hair tonic and played as Miles O'Keeffe's Bull on the playground. One of the best 80s Italian action movies sees Henry Silva and Miles O'Keeffe square off in the battle of the square jaws and stiff acting, while over ten thousand bullets are spent in under ninety minutes in Tarantini's lean action film. The Hard Way opens after the credit sequence and Luigi Ceccarelli's excellent movie theme to reveal an army squad creeping up to an open road in the jungle to intercept the "cocaine pick up." Enter Henry Silva as Captain Wesson and his crew of mercenaries to quickly dispatch the awaiting army. Wesson, cold as ice, wounds the awaiting army captain and shuffles him into his helicopter. A convoy of trucks, carrying enslaved locals and bushels of coca plants, head to a large, guarded compound. The compound is the drug plantation for Cartel overlord, Pinero (Philip Wagner), and Wesson brings the wounded army captain as a gift. After making the poor bastard eat about seven hundred bullets in a vulgar display of power, Pinero and Wesson have ended any opposition by the local government. Only the U.S. stands in the way now but Wesson has a mole inside the D.E.A., who keeps them informed about any secret operations.

The D.E.A. has their own mole inside Pinero's organization and they know the whereabouts of his plantation. While sending in U.S. troops is "politically impossible," the D.E.A. decides to send in a small elite group of soldiers, led by Colonel Bacall: three soldiers from three nations, Brazil, Germany, and its leader from the U.S., John Barrymore aka "The Bull" (Miles O'Keeffe). The D.E.A wastes about as little time as Tarantini does in The Hard Way to dispatch the trio from a plane over the jungle. As soon as their feet touch the ground, Bull cautions the other two: "If you get your ass shot off, you're on your own." The trio meet up with the mole from the D.E.A., who lays dead in his dapper white suit. Wesson has set a trap for the three and the bullets fly. Grenades are thrown and soldiers go bouncing everywhere. The only way to slow down The Hard Way is to put the disc on pause.

In a phenomenal sequence, Silva's Wesson lets the dogs loose to track the trio, while Wesson flies over head in his helicopter. The trio splits temporarily to divert the troops' attention. O'Keeffe's Bull reveals himself to be as sharp as his survival knife: with the said blade, Bull cuts a nasty gash in his own arm and bleeds himself a trail across a rope bridge, where the alligators are congregating in the swamp below. The troops and the dogs are diverted across the bridge, while Bull lays in ambush. Bull goes to cut the bridge but he's discovered! A knife toss and a high kick takes out two soldiers, while a full clip from his machine gun takes care of the twenty across the bridge. I think Bull missed the dogs (Tarantini's presumably a dog lover), and the alligators get nothing. What a set-up!

The trio reunite to meet Colonel Bacall with reinforcement troops, banded together in patrol boats coming down the river. Oh no, it's Wesson! In his helicopter! A few grenades and missiles later and get out the jam and jelly, because Bacall and company are toast! Okay, enough exclamation points. Bull tells his compatriots that they must complete the mission. Tarantini follows this litany of explosions with one of his best sequences: Bull stands at the edge of an open field and attracts the attention of an enemy helicopter. He runs full speed through the open field while bullets rain down around him. Bull alerts his buddies, and the two spring into action and pull their trap, a homemade clothesline which brings down the chopper with a bang.

Needless to say, I had an absolute blast watching The Hard Way. Michele Massimo Tarantini penned the screenplay, which probably looked more like a sketchbook of orchestrated action scenes, because the film is very lite on dialogue. Henry Silva throughout the film normally just barks into his walkie-talkie, but he delivers some of the best lines in the few minutes of the film when bullets aren't flying. With a tumbler of two fingers of Scotch in his hand, Wesson tells Pinero, "Let me tell you something...I love killing people. It gives me great satisfaction." The final third of the film is an assault on the plantation by O'Keeffe and crew, culminating in an escalating battle between O'Keeffe and Silva (which ends perfectly).

Tarantini spent the 70s directing crime flicks ( 7 Hours of Violence (1973)) and sex comedies (The Teasers (1975)). He moved into the 80s and put his hand into just about everything: sex comedies (A Policewoman in New York (1981)), sword-n-sandal (Barbarian Master (1982)), jungle/action/cannibal comedy (Massacre in Dinosaur Valley (1985)), and women in prison (Women in Fury (1985)). Tarantini is a terrific director, who has really never gotten his due. He's helmed quite a few good films, but he's often overshadowed by his contemporaries. However, with The Hard Way, he delivers one of the best Italian 80s action flicks, a literal visual assault on the viewer. The numerous action sequences are brilliantly shot and edited, and the film as a whole is well-paced. The Hard Way is always exciting, as Tarantini shows an incredible amount of enthusiasm. I wished he would have helmed more action films. Henry Silva is no stranger to Italian cinema nor to playing a bad mofo on screen. Silva goes from stoic to intensely animated in a split-second. He's a fantastic villain with other notable like roles in Fernando di Leo's Manhunt (1972), Umberto Lenzi's Free Hand for a Tough Cop (1976), and Fabrizio de Angelis's Man Hunt (1984), for example. Handsome Miles O'Keeffe began as Tarzan in John Derek's Tarzan, the Ape Man (1981). No stranger to Italian cinema, like Silva, O'Keeffe appeared as Ator in the fantasy films, Joe D'Amato's Ator the Invincible (1982) and Ator the Invincible 2 (1984) and Alfonso Brescia's Iron Warrior (1987). He also appeared in Ruggero Deodato's post-apocalyptic The Lone Runner (1986) and Stelvio Massi's actioner, Hell's Heroes (1987), alongside Fred Williamson. O'Keeffe's true talent is also his career hindrance: his uncanny likeness to a young Clint Eastwood, from his look to his demeanor to his delivery. This likeness was okay for the Italian 80s films, but when he plays Count Dracula, for example, in Anthony Hickox's Waxwork (1988), his limited range is really shown. Nonetheless, O'Keeffe is a perfect hero in The Hard Way with one of his best performances.

Anyone who loves the ridiculous and excessive frisson that only 80s action can deliver, then The Hard Way is the film for you. It is truly one of the best Italian action films, standing tall with Ruggero Deodato's Raiders of Atlantis (1983) and Bruno Mattei's Strike Commando (1987). See it.

Luigi Batzella's The Devil's Wedding Night (1973)

Some things truly never die but just disappear for a while. Lately, teen-angst and romance have been fuelling the recent popular trend, but they've seemingly always been around in pop culture and, especially, cinema. Yes, that's right, vampires. In the early 70s, at least in Europe, vampire cinema was still making the rounds: England's Hammer Studios, even in its waning days, was still sticking to its guns and producing Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee in Alan Gibson's The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973); while also producing fresher and more interesting takes on vampire lore, like Robert Young's Vampire Circus (1972) and Brian Clemens's Captain Kronos--Vampire Hunter (1974). Also in England, Spanish film maker, Jose Larraz would make his sick and sexy Vampyres (1974), while in his native country, Paul Naschy was making his own Gothic brand of horror, usually involving his reluctant werewolf character, Waldemar Daninsky, with an appearance as a vampire in Javier Aguirre's Count Dracula's Great Love (1972). Fellow Spaniard Jess Franco was releasing Dracula Against Frankenstein (1972), Daughter of Dracula (1972), and Female Vampire (1973). In France, Jean Rollin began his career with bloodsuckers, for example, directing Requiem for a Vampire and Shiver of the Vampires, both in 1971. Other vampire films were being produced around the continent; however, they were almost unheard of coming from Italy during this period. Interestingly, one that I pleasantly stumbled upon doesn't really take fangs as its focus but rather sex and Satanism in Luigi Batzella's The Devil's Wedding Night (1973). The Devil's Wedding Night opens with the camera chasing a young female through the forest at night. After taking a couple of twists and turns, she's toast for the unknown assailant. After a psychedelic credit sequence, the camera reveals bookish scholar, Karl Schiller (Mark Damon) in a Poe-esque pose behind his desk, reading about ancient lore. His twin brother, Franz (also Damon) enters his study and pours himself a drink. The rakish Franz has just lost again while gambling and he is interested in what his brother has gotten into. Karl is about to begin a journey, believing that he has learned the location of the "long lost ring of the of the Nibiloni (?)" What's that? It's a ring whose bearer holds power over all mankind and its previous holders were Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan and the like. So where's this groovy ring? "In north Transylvania, the Carpathian Mountains, specifically, Castle Dracula." Franz doesn't bat an eye and responds to his brother, "But that's vampire country. You have heard of those blood-sucking creatures, haven't you?" After Damon's delivery of this line, I'm hooked. It gets better. Vampires aren't a problem for Karl: during a previous expedition, he discovered an amulet which protects its wearer from all supernatural evils. "Vampires should be covered, then."The next sequence shows one of the Schillers on horseback, racing through the mountains. At a local inn in Transylvania, Franz arrives and requests a room. He asks about Castle Dracula and receives strange and quiet looks from the locals. The innkeeper's daughter shows Franz his room for the evening. As she is turning over his linens, she tells Franz that tomorrow night is the Night of the Virgin Moon. What's that? Every fifty years, after midsummer, five virgins are called to Castle Dracula. Franz shows the innkeeper's daughter his protective amulet and tells her not worry. Franz is such a kind fellow, he'll offer her some additional protection by taking care of her virginity for her. The following morning, Franz arrives at Castle Dracula and is greeted by the zombish Lara (Esmeralda Barros), the maidservant to Countess Dracula. Using the ruse that he is studying local architectural designs, Franz gains entry into the castle. Where's the Countess? She will be arriving, much later.


When Countess Dracula does appear in the film, the real jewel of The Devil's Wedding Night is revealed: Italian actress, Rosalba Neri. Gorgeous Neri was a staple of 60s and 70s genre cinema, and her popularity has never faded. She has developed quite a cult following for her sensuous demeanor and steamy sex scenes. Some of my favorite Neri performances are in the Fernando di Leo-scripted, Romolo Guerreri's Johnny Yuma (1966), also alongside Damon, Jess Franco's 99 Women (1969), Ottavio Alessi's The Seducers (1969), and Fernando di Leo's Slaughter Hotel (1971). Even fully-clothed and in the most innocuous scenes, charismatic Neri is always the focus and she doesn't disappoint in The Devil's Wedding Night. Neri is so elegant that she is able to credibly deliver in this exchange with Damon's Franz:


Countess Dracula: No, thank you. All this wine, I'm afraid, is making my head spin.
Franz: My head is spinning also...but not from the wine.
Countess Dracula: Oh, Schiller. You do have a way about you. I imagine women find you quite irresistible. Do they?
Franz: Do you?
Countess Dracula: Quite. But perhaps not in the same way as the others.
Franz: Oh? In what way then?
Countess Dracula: Differently.
Franz: Oh my dear Countess, all of the other women in my life are like so many ladies of the night compared to you. .


Countess Dracula: Oh...but I am in my own fashion also a lady of the night.


The sex scene that follows this exchange is one the true precious moments of Italian genre cinema. Either Damon's Franz is revealed to not be such the sophisticated ladies' man or Damon, the actor, is in awe: he has the look on his face that his world is about to get rocked by Neri, even in this simulated love-making scene. She absolutely dazzles. What was I talking about?
Oh, The Devil's Wedding Night goes on for the final two-thirds to be extremely predictable but also fun. Damon's Karl realizes that Franz has stole the amulet and comes to rescue him. Franz left the amulet at the inn, so he is totally vulnerable to the Countess's powers within the castle. The set-up with the legendary ring and the story of the five virgins on the Night of the Virgin Moon come to fruition. The Devil's Wedding Night's director, Luigi Batzella, is one of the true madmen of Italian genre cinema, alongside his cinematic brothers Rino di Silvestro (Red Light Girls (1974); Werewolf Woman (1976); and Hanna D (1984)) and Cesare Canevari (Mátalo (1970); The Nude Princess (1976); Gestapo's Last Orgy (1977); and Killing of the Flesh (1983)). Subsequent to The Devil's Wedding Night, Batzella would helm Blackmail (1974), a bizarre kidnapping tale about a hippie, played by Brigitte Skay, and, possibly his most well-known film, Nude for Satan (1974), before delivering his nasty, shower-inducing The Beast in Heat (1977). Batzella loves to fill his films with psychedelic and dream-like images, and Nude for Satan is representative and full of this type of imagery. Batzella also doesn't mind getting a little down and dirty. In The Devil's Wedding Night, Neri's the focus of a couple of dreamy sequences: in one she has the obligatory lesbian scene with Lara, who bathes her in blood, a la Bathory. In another with Karl, one sip of wine leads to uncontrollable laughter and the most bizarre audio and accompanying images. Needless to say, the Satanic finale is over the top and indulgent. Finally, Mark Damon is a wonderful old-school American actor, who went abroad to work in Italy, like many others during the period. I first saw him in Roger Corman's The House of Usher (1960), alongside Vincent Price. He would appear as the titular character in the excellent western, Johnny Yuma, and give an over-the-top performance in Carlo Lizzani's Kill and Pray (1967). Today, Damon is a very successful Hollywood producer. Damon gives a terrific and campy performance alongside Neri.The Devil's Wedding Night is the very definition of a guilty pleasure and it's a fun one to revisit every now and again. If anyone gets the chance to see it, forget it's about vampires and dive in and enjoy the mad silliness.

Sergio Martino's Silent Action (1975)

There is something nostalgic and almost ancient about relatively recent cinema involving police work, or in the case of Sergio Martino's Silent Action (1975), polizia work. Technology has grown rapidly in the thirty-four years since Silent Action, and cinema, especially television, has been quick to seize upon it in its depiction of "modern" police work: sophisticated evidence-gathering gadgets, cutting-edge medical and autopsy techniques, and the use (and often overuse) of large, internet-fuelled databanks. While culturally this depiction of police work might seem more credible and hence, more intriguing, I personally find it so cinematically unsatisfying. Perhaps I'm in the minority but I enjoy watching police officers use intuition as their primary tool; hit the street and gather clues in their polyester suits and turtlenecks; and make mistakes to get led astray and then get a break for a breakthrough in the case. Luc Merenda is from that class of police officers and he is on the case as Inspector Solmi in one of Sergio Martino's lesser-seen films.

The film opens with title cards, introducing the viewer to Milan, June 1974, where a driver is on the freeway. He pumps the brakes a few times and realizes that they are not working and soon crashes. The media reports that the driver is an army major, who had an unfortunate accident. Rome, August, 1974: two thugs break into an office and assault an old man. They shoot him in the head and place the gun in the dead man's hand. The media reports that the old man was a colonel and the death was by suicide. Florence-Bologna Railway lines, September, 1974 shows unknown men place an incapacitated man on the railway tracks. In a brutal sequence, the train speeds by and decapitates him. The newspapers reveal the identity of the victim as an army general and a police inquiry is begun. Salvatore Quirotie is the fourth homicide of the film, found in his wealthy villa, from a blunt attack to the skull with an iron poker. Inspector Solmi (Merenda) and District Attorney Nanino (Mel Ferrer) are assigned to the case. The crime scene yields little in the way of clues: long brown hair is found on a brush in the bathroom (obviously, says Solmi, a woman was here), and the police take Quirotie's personal book of phone numbers. The caretaker of the villa reveals that a woman was seen leaving the home on the night that Quirotie was murdered. Quirotie was a bachelor, who worked in "gadgets, like a master electrician." Solmi finds the number for a high-class madame in Quirotie's book, and he visits her at her bordello. Going from room to room, Solmi threatens to shut her operation down, unless she gives the name of the prostitute who visited Quirotie. The madame confesses and names the prostitute: La Polisina. Solmi and his partner arrive at the prostitute's apartment and ring the doorbell. The door explodes (!), as toxic gas flies out of the room. La Polisina, ne Juliana, lies on the floor of the kitchen, unconscious with her wrists slit.Ferrer's Nanino is ready to indict Juliana, as her suicide attempt is a clear admission of guilt. Solmi thinks otherwise, as he believes a woman is incapable of generating enough power to bash a man's skull in. Solmi tests this theory with his quick-witted, sharp, and beautiful journalist girlfriend, Maria (Delia Boccardo) on a pile of melons, Gallagher-style. Solmi cannot discern Juliana having a clear motive for Quirotie's murder and believes that this case is about something much deeper. Merenda's Solmi is quite correct as one of the most intricate and well-structured plots plays out. I scribbled nearly eight pages of notes while viewing Silent Action, keeping tabs on all the characters who are introduced and the various twists and turns that take place. By the time Sergio Martino directed Silent Action, he had already filmed all of his gialli (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971); Case of the Scorpion's Tail (1971); All the Colors of the Dark (1972); Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972); and Torso (1973)), for which he is much admired and loved by genre fans. Although Dario Argento would release Deep Red (1975) in the same year, the giallo was pretty much dead as a genre. Argento would become really a genre unto himself, and Martino would move into other genres, especially two of the more popular: sex comedies and crime flicks. Martino previously filmed Violent Professionals (1973), also with Luc Merenda, which is really more representative of the period's crime cinema: its subject is organized crime, where the criminals are machine-gun toting badasses and the police officers prefer to instigate interrogation with the back of their right hand. Car and motorcycle chases are obligatory and expected. Silent Action doesn't fit neatly into that category, as it takes as its premise a homicide investigation, which is a subject suited better for amateur sleuths in the giallo. As such, Silent Action plays like a hybrid of the crime and giallo genre to excellent effect. Perhaps the background of Silent Action's talented screenwriters, Massimo Felisatti, Fabio Pittorru, Gianfranco Couyoumdjian, and Martino contributed to the mix of crime and giallo. Felisatti had previously penned Emilio Miraglia's The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1972) and the spectacular and nasty, young thugs crime flick Violence for Kicks (1975), which he also co-directed with Sergio Grieco. Felisatti would also contribute to the script for Andrea Bianchi's Strip Nude for Your Killer and another excellent crime/giallo hybrid, Mario Caiano's The Maniac Responsible, both released in 1975. Fabio Pittorru collaborated with Felisatti on The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave and The Maniac Responsible. Prior to Silent Action, Pittorru contributed to the screenplay of Emilio Miraglia's The Red Queen Kills 7 Times (1972) and Ruggero Deodato's Wave of Lust (1975). Silent Action was Gianfranco Couydoumdjian's first screenplay. He would later become notable as a producer. As each screenwriter had his hand in often both, or multiple genres, it was inevitable that there would be a conscious or subconscious crossover. Italian genre cinema was going through a transitional period, and in some ways, Silent Action is representative of the transition.

In a break-in sequence during Silent Action, Martino films it from the intruder's subjective P.O.V., reminiscent of his previous gialli films, especially Torso. A fairly intense car chase also occurs, where a cop on a motorcycle stops Solmi and his suspect and fires his gun, killing the suspect and setting off the chase. The pacing of Silent Action is fantastic: the script has little filler. The film moves with Solmi and his police cohorts as they move through the investigation towards the end. Merenda's not one of the greatest actors, but he's occasionally animated and quite often focused in Silent Action with his stoic presence. Tomas Milian gives a typical, yet very good, brooding and quiet performance in a small but integral role. Ferrer and Boccardo give good performances, also, in their supporting roles. Overall, Silent Action is a tight mystery, occasionally punctuated by some intense action sequences, and very much well worth seeing for genre fans.

Other notable giallo/crime hybrids are Massimo Dallamano's What Have They Done To Your Daughters (1974), The Maniac Responsible, Martino's The Suspicious Death of a Minor (1975), and Alberto de Martino's Blazing Magnum (1976). While Silent Action probably won't satisfy pure fans of polizia films nor pure giallo fans, it will be intriguing and interesting for fans, like me, who absolutely love genre cinema made in Italy during the 70s.

Nello Rossati's Top Line (1988)

The Sensuous Nurse (1975), fun and forgettable, like a lot of 70s Italian sex comedies, revelled really in its representative nature with its farcical humor and sight-gags, starring international sex symbol, Ursula Andress. Its legacy, at least in the American memory, was the second life Andress's nurse breathed into the production during the subsequent decade, where on late-nite cable television, The Sensuous Nurse sent boys' boxer briefs flying into the ankle zone. Meanwhile, in cinemas, Franco Nero was resurrecting an old hero and an earlier role with his return as Django in the fittingly-titled, Django Strikes Again (1987). While you are still wrapping your head around the image of a nude Ursula Andress (or have left and are wrapping your hand around your head), I will reveal the connection between the two films: their director, Nello Rossati. As of date, Rossati has helmed fifteen films in his career, with the above two most likely his most notable, but the year following Django Strikes Again, Rossati would deliver, along with star, Franco Nero, a real hidden gem of 80s Italian genre cinema, Top Line (1988). Top Line is a ridiculous and excessive blend of action, adventure, science-fiction, and suspense. It's also totally radical fun, like an ancient hidden spaceship in a Colombian mountain or like a bull charging a cyborg. Those similes are allusions to images within Top Line, but you're probably still thinking about nekkid Ursula Andress. Anyway, bad jokes aside, Top Line is about a writer, Ted Angelo (Franco Nero), who's destitute and drunk, living in Colombia. His publisher and ex-wife, Maureen De Havilland (Mary Stavin) cuts off his funding and sends him a plane ticket for a trip back to Italy. One morning, Angelo's local girlfriend awakens him at knife point, and Angelo's relieved that she didn't kill him and extremely excited that the knife's an antique ("Where did you get this?"). She leads Angelo to her brother, who found the knife in a cave, while trekking though the jungle. Her brother seemingly is the only one who knows the location of the cave and he allows Angelo to have a diary that he found there. Angelo takes the diary to his best friend, Professor Alonso Kintero (William Berger), who tells him that the diary holds the secret to a cache of pre-Colombian gold. What a find! Does Angelo know what this means? Yeah, historical value be damned. Unlike Indiana Jones, this treasure doesn't belong in a museum but in private hands of a collector, preferably holding some sweet cash. Kintero agrees to hook Angelo up with sinister and dangerous Heinrich Holzmann (Oscar-winner, George Kennedy), who's the largest private collector of pre-Colombian artifacts. Before Angelo gets to see the German, Berger's Kintero turns up dead, the victim of some brutal torture. Coincidence? Angelo doesn't think so and he forces the kid who found the diary to take to him to the cave. Inside the cave, Angelo finds a secret passage and inside the passage, a five-hundred-year-old Spanish ship resides with an alien spaceship parked right next to it.After the first act of Top Line, a lot of guests show up at the party: the CIA, the KGB, a cyborg, Angelo's ex-wife, and of course, aliens. Ted Angelo's not having a very good time while uncovering a vast world-wide conspiracy, but Franco Nero is obviously having a splendid time in his role. After exiting the cave, Angelo comes back to his hotel, where he is greeted by two unwelcome guests, who have just finished rummaging his room. An exciting foot-chase sequence plays out, with Kennedy's Holzmann leading the pursuit. Angelo barely escapes into the arms of Professor Kintero's assistant, June (Deborah Moore), who accompanies Nero for the remainder of the film, as his confidant in his quest to uncover the conspiracy and as his burgeoning love interest. Watching Nero guzzle his booze and relay his alien theory, quickly like an excited child, is hilarious ("Hey, this is no bullshit."). The only thing really driving the incredulous story line is Nero's sincerity as Angelo. Franco Nero is a fantastic and legendary Italian actor. Some of my favorite Nero performances are in Sergio Corbucci's Django (1966) and Companeros (1970); Enzo G. Castellari's High Crime (1973) and Street Law (1974); Pasquale Festa Campanile's Hitch Hike (1977); and Menahem Golan's Enter the Ninja (1981). Mary Stavin's performance is pretty sweet, as her character becomes quite an unexpected surprise. Stavin was previously in Fred Dekker-scripted, Steve Miner's fun House (1986) and subsequently appeared in Bruno Mattei's powerhouse actioners, Strike Commando 2 (1988) and Born to Fight (1989), both alongside Brent Huff. Berger and Moore's performances are quite good too.

Finally, praise needs to be sung to Top Line's unsung hero, Nello Rossati, in one of his most unsung films. Rossati's film isn't filled with a bunch of signature and showy shots but instead, the whole film shines with a slick, commercial gloss, regardless of its budget. Rossati also possesses one of the few traits that many film makers never had and that many have lost touch with today: knowing when to loosen up and have fun. The addition of the Terminator-like cyborg showing up near the end is totally unnecessary to the plot, but its inclusion is totally necessary to Top Line's overall sense of fun. It's almost as if Rossati perfectly knows how to moderate his film's ridiculousness and excessiveness (however, exceeding those limits is often okay, too). Top Line is a terrific Italian 80s genre picture. Seek it out.