"Argento's Dracula 3D" (2012) d/ Dario Argento

Whether you call it Woptober or Italo-ween (we transcend all petty labels here), it looks as though we're wrapping up another successful one tonight with an Argento review, and his three dimensional take on the most infamous vampire of all, in Dracula 3-D, his 2012 effort. I shouldn't have to tell you by now that you won't be enjoying Suspiria or Tenebre level Argento when you sit down to watch this one, and expecting as much from it is naivete' on the viewer's part, and I'd like to think the vast majority of my subscribers are above such "fresh out of the package" thought processes. Though nobody with functional eyes will mistake it for top shelf Dario, the fact remains: even his shlockiest mediocrity is still heads and tails over seventy-five percent of the scareless copycat dreck that pollutes today's horror scene.


Here's a majestic pair of real D's you wanna see in RealD 3D.
After an ill-advised fling on Walpurgis Night, at the foot of the Carpathians, next to a village called Passo Borgo (Borgo Pass? Carpathian mountains? Walpurgis Night? Why not just have sex in Crystal Lake on Friday the 13th, ferchrissakes, you idiotic peasants), busty Tania (Miriam Giovanelli) is dispatched by an animate shadow in the night. Meanwhile, a librarian named Jonathan Harker (Unax Ugalde) arrives in the village on business dealings with a resident nobleman named Count Dracula (Thomas Kretschmann) after briefly visiting Lucy (Asia Argento), the mayor's daughter and best friend to his wife, Mina (Marta Gastini). At the castle, he's greeted by Tania (aren't you dead?), who unsuccessfully tries to seduce him into a quick bite, but Drac rolls in like ants at a picnic and steals the vampiric vixen's vital fluids out from under her pretty little undead nose. Jonathan survives the fanging, if only long enough to attempt an escape, which might have worked if the Count couldn't metamorphosize into a fucking wolf. Just sayin'.


"Arrrgh! You Tom and Jerry-ed me!!!"
Of course, while Mina is in the village visiting Lucy, her best friend falls prey to the ancient blood-sipper, leading the concerned wife to pay a call to Dracula's stony digs to inquire about her husband. At the castle, she finds herself under the influence of the vampire, who has orchestrated the eerie events thus far, just to get close to Mina, who's a dead ringer for a centuries old flame he's never forgotten. Around this time, Van Helsing (Rutger fucking Hauer!) makes the scene, familiar with the tell-tale signs of rampant blood drinkery, and preparing to go knuckle up with his pale nemesis once and for all. While he's putting an end to Tania at Drac's pad, the Count pays the villagers a visit, paying them all back with violent death for renegging on the pact they had struck with him. I'm pretty sure you've got an idea how this story wraps up, more or less, and even if you don't, you're still gonna have to score a copy to find out for yourselves. Happy Halloween!


I'm familiar with Northern and Southern Mantis styles, but Transylvanian Mantis?
Like most of his modern era efforts, at least as far back as Opera (1987), Argento's work is uneven here in delivering the vampiric goods; slowly paced, handicapped by embarrassing cgi effects, and a pedestrian script that's mostly unfaithful to Bram Stoker's famous novel, though his obvious visual tributes to previous genre masters like Bava and Margheriti (and more so, Hammer movies of the fifties and sixties as evidenced by the costumes, locations, beautiful women, bountiful breasts, and fake blood),  are not wasted on your humble critic-at-large. It still pains me to a certain degree to declare a movie by the "Italian Hitchcock" a middling interpretation of the immortal horror classic, having been such a huge fan of his work most of my life. In Draculean measurement, it falls somewhere around the Frank Langella and Jack Palance versions, well behind Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, and Klaus Kinski, but miles above Gary Oldman's take, in my honest opinion. It still boggles my mind how anybody digs that one, I left the theater well pissed afterwards. As for this one, give it a look for yourselves...


This is Dracula's polite way of telling you that your head sucks.

"La casa dalle finestre che ridono" (1976) d/ Pupi Avati

Tonight, you get a real treat with Halloween hard on our heels, one of my favorites, an odd, cerebral giallo of the highest order from Bolognese writer/director Pupi Avati, the man who helped script Pier Paolo Pasolini's notorious Salo; o le 120 giornate di Sodoma (1975)  and later brought you Zeder aka/ Revenge of the Dead (1983). What the film lacks in the conventions of the sub-genre, black-gloved killers or the usual laundry list of gorgeous victims, it makes up for with deliciously subtle moments of genuine terror, an unsettling rural community vibe of Wicker Man or Don't Look Now (1973) proportions, and effective marriage of photography and score with convincing performances from an able cast, headed by Lino Capolicchio, of Antonio Bido's Solamente nero (1978) and Avati's later effort, La strelle nel fosso (1979). This one is a cult gem of rare luster, brilliance, and fire that begs immediate viewing, if not permanent residence on your shelves.


"...what a brutal painting, they even shivved him in the tits ."
In a rural northern Italian community, an artist named Stefano (Lino Capolicchio) receives commission from their half-mayor (he looks to be a squashed hunchback dwarf of some kind) to restore an aging, creepy fresco on the local church wall, depicting two grinning dames sadistically stabbing Saint Sebastian in the stomach (alliteration, anyone?). As it would seem, the disturbing depiction was realized by a right unstable loon named Legnani, who famously pulled pain and suffering from his palate of colors the way Epstein pulled ABC to victory at that fateful Battle of the Network Stars tug o' war so many years ago. It would also seem that this artist of aggression had a pair of sisters so unhinged that they made him...look...like...Spock, in comparison. Slowly, Stefano begins to uncover the villa's villainous secrets and rumors; had Legnani's siblings slain sacrificial citizens for their brother's crimson canvases? As fate would have it, Stefano finds room and board in an eldritch estate at the edge of town, empty but for a bedridden biddy (Pina Borione) and a young mental midget from the church who performs odd jobs , while his friend Antonio, who happened to be investigating Legnani's life at the time, allegedly decides life no longer holds the excitement it once did, and swan dives out a window.
 

"We can't watch The Waltons and Welcome Back, Kotter, they're in the same time slot."
After scoring a choice one nighter with the local nympho-teacher whose bags are packed, Stefano also manages to stumble inside her successive substitute in a chick named Francesca (Francesca Marciano), and it isn't long before they're sharing his living arrangements at Secretive Shanty, and it's even shorter before they're both experiencing the place's evil ambience. Stefano's investigation leads him to a mysterious dictograph tape of a man's voice reading pernicious poetry, a journal dating back to the thirties, and ultimately upon the cruel artist's life residence itself, a weird little house with grinning mouths painted over all the windows, located well off the beaten path. He receives anonymous threatening phone calls imploring him to quit his job at the church, and when his restoration is later mysteriously damaged by acid, he decides to gather up Francesca and vacate the villainous village for good, except that the town's resident sot has decided to reveal to him the titular house's darkest secret, which leads to a far out finale that twists harder than Chubby Checker's sacrum that I couldn't, in good conscience, reveal to you here. See for yourselves.


"Maybe you should check out Buvat's work on idiopathic male sexual insufficiency...there's a great listlessness in your slacks."
For the more attention deficient horror fiends out there (from the current generation of you of the fedora, neckbeard, and skinny pants-wearing clan, no doubt...  not mine, I can assure you that I was already a fully attentive ten year old for the entire run time of Dawn of the Dead in the theater), the deliberately paced suspense might seem a little long winded towards the middle, but for those fanatics whose genre appreciation extends further than a wisecracking Freddy Krueger with a rubbery prop head skewered on his glove-knives, this one will rapidly catapult into your favorites list, or near enough to it for repeated viewings hereafter. Naturally, it merits Wopsploitation's highest rating, four Wops; a mature and intelligent horror-giallo hybrid that'll effect many of you profoundly the first time you screen it. The Euroshock Collection print from Image suits me nicely, though there may indeed be a BD out by now, your call. Recommended.


"That's the best-ah tomato fight I've had-ah in years! Still-ah the fahking-ah champ-ah!"

"Le foto di Gioia" (1987) d/ Lamberto Bava

I can't believe we've never covered this one over the last eight years. I must have had it laid out and unfairly collecting archival dust for two or three, at least. It's a weird giallo, original and visually striking if moderately bloodless in it's delivery of wanton nudity and sleaze, instead of the usual red stuff. You give me a pack of butts, a phatty nug for my Lions helmet-bowl, and a sleazy giallo, and I'm one or two petite brunettes with a platter full of grapes away from an enchanting evening, for sure.Make that a sleazy giallo featuring the Italian Dolly Parton herself, Serena Grandi, supported here by the likes of Daria Nicolodi, the Grim Reaper himself, Luigi Montefiore aka/ George Eastman,  David Brandon, and Capucine, with a soundtrack by Simon Boswell, like tonight's review, and it's one for the ages, more often than not.


"You're not still pissed about that time I pulled your uterus out and ate it, are you?", asks Alex (George Eastman).
How's this for a stretch...Gioia (Serena Grandi), a retired...model, ahem...focuses on the successful new men's publication called "Pussycat" she heads with the help of assistant Evelyn (Daria Nicolodi) and her photographer brother, Tony (Vanni Corbellini), until one of her models dies photographically on of her memorable former sets, something one would naturally assume is going to occur more than once in a picture like this. It does, and often in a surreal, red-filtered fashion, with the cover models/victims' heads metamorphosizing into giant veiny eyeballs, and the anonymous killer artistically propping the fresh corpses against a sofa in front of blown up, titular photos of Gioia, sending the morbid photographic compositions to the chesty heroine. 


You ask what it'd take for this guy to judge on American Idol? Well, for starters...
There's the dirty prank calls Gioia receives from an adolescent crippled perv next door neighbor named Mark who displays frustration and bitterness at the loss of his girlfriend in the car crash that has left him an obsessive invalid. As the bodies start to pile up, Gioia becomes convinced she'll be the next victim on the list, though towards the middle, the film bogs down with a mostly unnecessary (much cozier than their work together in D'Amato's Anthropophagus) love angle involving Gioia and Alex (George Eastman), that seemingly puts a freeze on the strange murders and Inspector Corsi's (Lino Salemme of "Demoni" (1985) and "Demoni 2" (1986) fame) ongoing investigation, but Alex doesn't stick around for long. Eventually, after having discovered another new cadaver in a huge multi-level clothing outlet, Gioia encounters the cackling, shadowy murderer for herself, leading to a wild, twist-filled finale that should satisfy you, once you've secured yourselves a copy, which I suggest you do.


Spoiler: Stellar costume design like this guarantees at least two wops.
I could give you the usual genre pedigree of some of the cast and crew as you'd expect, or I could go on at some length about Ms. Grandi's abundant, fleshy assets. My inner demons have advised me to inform you that masculinity has again won the day, so Serena's thick, pillowy,  physical beauty of larger-than-life pin up proportions, it is. Her massive milkwagons, on full display here, are truly awe-inspiring to a bobbler-backer from way back, like myself, perfectly complimenting the luxuriant curves of her body, which would not be out of place, represented in marble in the Roman garden of a high-ranking official of the halcyon days of the empire. Insert two banger cigarette break right here. Check out her work with Ass-man extraordinaire, Tinto Brass, and exploitative pornographer supreme, Aristide Massaccesi aka/ Joe D'Amato for further...in depth, ahem...anatomical study. Two Wops on the scale, and certainly worth a peek.


"Get closer to the microscope, I still can't see Ms. Grandi's wardrobe..."

"Lo squartatore di New York"(1982)d/Lucio Fulci

It gives me great pleasure to painstakingly peruse through one of my fave Fulci flicks of all-time for you here, tonight, a deliciously bleak and violently misogynistic giallo, oft-shrouded in a swirling vortex of conservative controversy over its frank portrayals of violence against women.I shouldn't have to mention this, but such aggression towards chicks is only cool during zesty boudoir roleplay between two consenting deviate adults.Don't kill anybody.Now that we've gotten that outta the way, back to tonight's review.Papa Lucio also co-wrote the De Angelis production, known internationally as "New York Ripper"(as opposed to the Pennsylvanian variety), with Dardano Sacchetti and two others, hiring the late maestro Francesco De Masi to handle the soundtrack duties, while Rosario Prestopino, Franco Di Girolamo, and Maurizio Trani tackled the uber-graphic splatter effects abound in the film.To dress his grim stage this time around, Fulci enlisted the talents of Jack Hedley and Howard Ross, as well as familiar Italian names like Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli, Zora Kerova, and Daniela Doria, while saving cameos for director Michele Soavi and himself, as always(this time he's the chief of police).Fulci's seedy vision was set upon almost immediately by censors' razor blades worldwide, with an uncut version still unavailable in puritanical Dear Old Blighty(even Blue Underground's bluray and Shameless Films releases have at least thirty-two of the nastiest seconds excised from their respective prints).In being a giallo that sinks unflinchingly lower into perversity than most others of its ilk, Ripper also stands as a cinematic record for all-time of the grittily glorious Forty-Deuce in midtown Manhattan, its porn parlours and grindhouse theaters now a mere memory for those who may have trudged its dirty sidewalks regularly(ahem)during the era.Don't judge me, you dicks...

Must be a cadav-rador retriever.Sorry, kids.
At the base of the Brooklyn Bridge, an old man's dog fetches the disembodied, decaying hand of a murdered hooker instead of the stick he threw, leading Lt. Williams(Jack Hedley) to interrogate the ex-streetwalker's busybodied landlady, who claims she eavesdropped on a phone conversation a week earlier between the whore and one of her johns, who spoke like a duck.Meanwhile, a young bicyclist(Cinzia De Ponti) looking to vandalize the car of an angry motorist aboard the Staten Island Ferry, instead bumps into a mysterious stranger who quacks like a duck as he guts her like so much human tilapia with his trusty switchblade, leaving her eviscerated body in the vehicle for authorities to discover on the other side.After catching heat from the chief(Lucio Fulci) for leaking the threat of a serial killer to the newsmedia, Williams is informed that someone sounding like a duck called and asked to speak with him.Williams enlists the services of Columbia University's own leading psychotherapist, Dr. Davis(Paolo Malco), to help profile the brutal woman-hating murderer on the loose in the Big Apple.That night, a raincoated well-to-do New Yorker(Alexandra Delli Colli) watches a live sex show while tape recording the lovemaking sounds of the couple on stage, while in turn being watched by an eight-fingered undesirable(Howard Ross) who's sitting in the same row.Backstage, the female performer(Zora Kerova) takes a broken bottle from a quacking assailant to her vagina, and is slit open long ways, to her abdomen.Yiiikes.Williams is awoken from the arms of a prostitute named Kitty(Daniela Doria) by a phone call from the quacking ripper himself, confessing that he's struck again.Elsewhere, Dr. Lodge(Laurence Welles) approves of his wife's latest tape recording, settling in to listen to it, as she takes advantage of their open living arrangements to be goaded and sexually harrassed by young hispanics who big toe her pantiless pussy at a bar in a bad neighborhood.

Quack!Quack!Quack!Quack!He broke a bottle and stabbed up her crack.
On the subway, Fay Majors(Almanta Keller) struggles to avoid the creepy advances of the same eight-digit creep from the stroke parlour, only to be attacked by the titular fiend in a dark alleyway, getting her arms and leg slashed in the process.Her boyfriend Peter(David Bunch) is surprised to hear that she imagined him to be the switchblade bearer in her groggy delusions when he visits her in the hospital the next day.Lodge's wife has taken up with the pervert with the incomplete mitt for some hotel room-based sadistic sex when she overhears a radio deejay talking to the 'New York Ripper' while describing the scumbag who's fallen asleep and left her tied to the bed(!).She manages to free herself and slip out unnoticed, only to be gutted by the real killer for her troubles.Williams and company are sure this porn-addicted Greek lowlife is their man, despite Davis' reservations that he doesn't fit the highly intelligent profile that he's built for the Ripper-at-large.Williams receives another phone call from the killer, who boasts that he's about to dedicate a murder to the lieutenant.The police trace the call to a remote phone booth where a two-way radio has been strategically placed, as the Ripper takes a razor blade to Williams' frequent trick, Kitty, splitting her nipples and midsection open before bifurcating her open eyeball with it(!!).Williams arrives just in time to find her mutilated body, but too late for the killer.When the eight-fingered pervert turns up eight days dead, a victim of suicide by suffocation, the authorities deduce that he couldn't have been the killer, since Kitty bought the farm only four days ago.We're then introduced to Suzy, Fay's boyfriend's daughter from a previous marriage, who suffers from a rare bone malady that has caused doctors to amputate her left arm and right leg.The cops speed to Fay and Peter's place, where duck-like phone calls are received and overheard.Fay slashes her beau with a kitchen knife, causing him to start quacking maniacally(ah-HA!), but before he can add her to his growing list of victims, Williams blows most of his grillpiece away with a well-placed bullet.In the ambulance, Davis explains Peter's underlying hatred for promiscuous women, since his ailing daughter would never be able to grow up and enjoy such freedoms herself.From the hospital bed, a tearful Suzy calls out for her daddy to answer the phone...

Waxing or laser removal might be a less painful option.Just sayin'.
I can still remember my next-door neighbor showing up at my patio door with a freshly rented Vidmark pan n' scan VHS tape, and the two of us heartily laughing it up at the quacking, in between gasps at the visceral midsection jabs dearest Lucio took at his audience in delivering radical blame to the very genre medium he happened to be working in here.Ripper is by no means a very nice movie, but it is extremely well-made(perhaps too well) and a neccessary evil for collectors of such savage cinema.Ignore the film's many nay-sayers and detractors, lacking the hindsight to see where Fulci was going with this one, and check it out for yourselves.You'll probably like it nearly as much as I do.On the scale, New York Ripper earns three vividly gory B.W.s, truly a one of a kind film as realized by a master of exploitative cinema.Highly recommended.

"La violenza è arte italiana!"

"Zombi Holocaust"(1980)d/Marino Girolami

We've got a real fucking gem for you, the eagerest of woprophiles, to feast your glassies upon tonight, kids.An Italian exploitative classic and original BBFC-certified 'video nasty' as helmed by Enzo Castellari's dad(!), that mixes two subgenres(cannibals and zombies, though the powdery, Moe Howard-wigged natives do all of the glorious gut-munching here) with often hilarious results.In a mad rush to emulate Fulci's Zombi 2 and Deodato's Cannibal Holocaust all the way to the bank, the film's producers hastily slung together some mind bogglingly uber violent, cheap-looking gore(as provided by Maurizio Trani and Rosario Prestopino), naked thrills(as frequently served up by Alexandra Delli Colli), some identical shooting locations to Fulci's earlier film, and a cast comprised of regular genre names like Ian McCullough, Donald O'Brien, and Sherry Buchanan around a slapdash Fabrizio DeAngelis script(?) and Nico Fidenco score.Two years later, Aquarius Releasing slapped two and a half minutes from an unfinished 1977 anthology project entitled 'Tales That'll Tear Your Heart Out' onto the beginning, re-edited the film for pacing, replaced the score, whipped up a gloriously demented one sheet based on a photo of Salvador Dali(!), and changed the title to the familiar Dr. Butcher, MD, and the rest, as the late, great Chas Balun would say, is chunk-blowin' history.I remember picking up the Paragon VHS at the long gone General Radio outlet in Wilkes-Barre and thinking to myself, "Look at this, this has to be a fucking masterpiece!" as I greedily drank in the screenshot of the split-wigged cannibal on the back of the box while my father coarsely grilled one of the salespeople about a non-existent porno section.We Monteforte boys know how to live, that's for sure.

Apply more chicken gizzards to this patient's midsection, nurse...
After various body parts start disappearing from cadavers and turning up in the hungry gullet of a local immigrant hospital worker, who, upon screeching discovery, makes with an impromptu swan dive out an upper floor window only to break an arm off on the concrete below like the cheap mannekin he was, no doubt, in life.It just so happens that one of the morgue assistants, the oft-nakies Lori(Alexandra Delli Colli) just happens to be an anthropology buff(what are the chances.), and as such, she pinpoints the origin of the late heart-chewin' rascal to be Asian(Molucca, to be precise), and with the crack detective work of Dr. Chandler(Ian McCullough), the duo unravel the mystery of some primitive symbolism found at the anthropophagal crime scenes, which have extended past their own place of employment and into any surrounding hospitals that have unfortunately hired on any Moluccans of late.They enquire about the term 'Kito' to Lori's colleague and top anthropologist, Professor Stafford, who relates that it's not only the name of an island where the mythical cannibal god of the same name existed, but also the residence of a primitive tribe who comprise the 'Sect of Kito' that worships him through blood sacrifices and cannibalism.Lori finds her pad rummaged through and her ceremonial Kito dagger's been ruthlessly ganked.Call the cops? Meh, call the tourism agent.I'm sold, book the flight, baby.Joined by Susan, George(Sherry Buchanan,Peter O'Neil), and a dusty Jeep-driving guide, they track down Dr. Obrero(Donald O'Brien), a world famous surgeon who's apparently content playing doctor for the natives in a jungle Hell, and who assigns the aptly-named Mulotto(Dakar) and four bearers to Chandler's expedition into the green inferno to Kito, at the opposite end of the archipelago.Lori, shagged from the flight, strips down to knickers n' tits for a refreshing shower, unaware she's being spied upon by a powder-pussed cannibal in a Moe Howard wig, who's cruel, primitive, and absolutely unwilling to accept any form of civilization, just outside her window.Cue annoying, dated 80's synth stab.

"You call that an eye gouge, you turkeyneck? Wait'll I get ya in the ring!"
Lori returns from her shower to find a maggot-ridden human head and Kito symbol scrawled in blood under her bedsheets.After finding a well-mown patch of lawn grass in the dense jungle to set up camp in, one of the bearer's screams interrupts the party's campfires that night.The next day, Susan shriekingly stumbles across his mutilated remains in the grass, a Kito symbol spraypainted on a nearby tree.These mugs don't muck about.One of the porters tries to make a break for it, but unwittingly springs a bamboo spear trap on himself, as the approaching cannibals slit his throat, drinking the arterial spray, before gutting him longways and eating his innards raw.That night, Lori's forced to split the wig of a peeping cannibal outside her tent as the last porter takes a fatal bamboo harpoon to the labonza.The next day, the wily flesh-eaters lassoo a screaming Susan with a red satin sash-lariot and carry her off into the bushes.In the melee, George gets fish-gutted against a tree, as hungry natives pluck both his eyes out and eat them.The others are about to suffer the same fate, when an oatmeal-faced zombie with soundstage echoed groans appears and scares off the gut-munching primitives in the nick of time.The three survivors make it to Obrero, who points them to a rubber dinghy that's guarded by another cheap-looking zombie, who Peter de-face-ifies with an outboard motor(!).Afterwards, he and Lori find another zombie wearing Susan's bloody scalp like a toupee.Meanwhile, the scalpless Susan is about to have her jugular vein opened by Obrero, who's been secretly creating an army of mindless zombies by placing the brains of the living into the bodies of the recently dead all the while.It figures, man.When Susan's incessant screams annoy the good doctor, he removes her vocal cords(!!).His mad dreams of playing God are rudely interrupted by the cannibals, who have declared Lori their queen after stripping her naked and painting juvenile hippie flowers all over her and placing her naked ass in a primitive stone spreadagle-contoured fuck table, descending upon the doctor and his zombies in a climactic orgy of bad makeup and cheap ultraviolence as flames engulf his crazed work and credits roll.

Wop's diagnosis:Wind knocked out.
For years I made do with the German Dragon dvd release, which includes a nifty inlay card with meaty collage and 53 movie filmography for Girolami spanning 30 years (layed out over a shot of Delli Colli in the fuck table, mind you), extended/deleted scenes, and a trailer, until I stumbled upon the recent Media Blasters/Shriek Show disc(superior transfer for such a piece of shit, bravo, boys!) for less than what I'd pay for a pack of smokes in Manhattan, at a video clearance outlet.That's really what tonight's movie is, folks, eight bucks worth of Italian exploitative goodness that's sure to please gorehounds and genre nuts alike.If you're going in for substance or quality, you're bound to be highly disappointed.Still, the American one sheet has to be considered one of the best of the fabled era, so give yourself +2 if you've got it framed on the walls of your digs.On the scale, of course, Holocaust is another one Wopper, but when has that ever stopped you from checking it out?Track it down...

Don't worry, sweetheart, it only hurts sliding in the first time...

"Incubo sulla città contaminata"(1980)d/Umberto Lenzi

When I say that tonight's review is a becloudedly inept, low budgeted mess that often defies explanation, it's less out of criticism than it is out of love.We're talking about the Umberto Lenzi here, exploitation master whose Toscanan ass occupied the director's chair on such diverse genre classics as Attentato ai tre grandi(1967), The Man From Deep River(1972), Eyeball(1975), Napoli Violenta(1976), and, of course, everyone's favorite grindhouse feature, Cannibal Ferox(1981).Even when his lens isn't focused upon despicable acts of animal cruelty or a coked out Johnny Morghen, the man's managed to do everything from gialli and poliziotteschi to westerns and horror movies in his long and illustrious career, even managing to pioneer the cannibal sub-genre along the way.Though tonight's movie, also released under the alternate titles of City of the Walking Dead and Nightmare City, suffers from a Crayola script full of hokey cine-science and putrescent dialogue exchanges made to decompose more rapidly through adventitious performances from its lackluster conclave of actors, as headed by Hugo "One facial expression oughta cover it" Stiglitz and Mel "I've got more Maybelline on than the entire female cast" Ferrer, and filled out by familiar Italian genre faces like Stefania D'Amario, Ugo Bologna, and Maria Rosaria Omaggio, there's an undeniable emptyheaded charm about the Italo-Spanish collaboration that's hard not to notice.I've heard it said that Lenzi's weapon-toting, sprint speed contamino-zombies were an inspirational precursor to Danny Boyle's wildly successful 28 Days Later, and though that comparison holds some modicum of possibility, to be sure, let's not hastily rush to judgment here.Away from the smoke and mirrors of trendy fanboy analysis, Incubo is an uneven, cheap, continuity-free puddle o'schlock n' sloppy gore that vainly tries to cash in on the Italian zombie craze of the day, or, in other words, exactly what you're looking for.

Hugo Stiglitz, Hugo Stiglitz, oh, oh, oh, Hugo Stiglitz...Hugo Stiglitz-litz-litz-litz.Falco shoulda totally tried the song out that way.
Dean Miller(Hugo Stiglitz), a television news reporter, awakens from a bad dream, running late for an interview concerning a recent nuclear accident(based on a similar 1976 incident at a chemical plant in Seveso) with a prestigious scientist in the field named Hagenbeck.As Miller and his assistant arrive at the local airport, a large military Hercules air transport silently approaches the runway for an emergency landing with no clearance.The plane is quickly surrounded by airport security and beret-sporting military types who shout cautionary warnings (in familiar dubbing editor Nick Alexander's voice) into a bullhorn, but when the door finally opens moments later, a congregate of crazed radiation-deformed psychos(translation:Italians with latex slopped randomly on their faces) led by Hagenbeck bound from inside, armed with knives, axes, bats, and machine guns, and immediately begin hacking, stabbing, and shooting the fuck out of anybody in attendance, pouncing on open wounds to greedily gulp the red stuff spurting out.Evidently, the military plane was stocked to the gills with handheld melee weapons.Or maybe they just brought their own.One of the tox-omb-pires is swinging a farmer's scythe around.I'm not gonna try explaining that one.Miller and assistant somehow barely avoid ending up dead(translation: unconvincingly playing dead, lying on the asphalt with stage blood sparingly dripped on them) like all the others, making their way to a nearby television studio where some lycra-bound guys and gals are being filmed as they flail about out of sync to some embarrassing disco for the cameras.Miller tries to interrupt the broadcast with an emergency bulletin, but the station's plug is momentarily pulled by the military, as led by Murchison(Mel Ferrer), a General defiant enough to rock enough eyeshadow and lip gloss to choke Adam Ant(in the pre-"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era, mind you), in attempt to suppress widespread panic.Miller, faced with the impending gag order, chooses to quit his job instead, and extricate his wife(Laura Trotter) from the hospital where she works so they can flee together.

Major Holmes(Francisco Rabal) scrutinizes his wife's(Maria Rosaria Omaggio) major hams.
With the oatmeal-faced rascals on their murderous bender, it seems like every guy in the movie is obligated to call home and warn a wife or daughter not to venture out into the blood-letting hijinks.When Major Holmes(Francisco Rabal) calls his wife(Maria Rosaria Omaggio), she's startled to find the lawnmower running on its own and a bloody knife jutted into the eye of her latest sculpture.Meanwhile, the television studio is attacked(luckily their tv monitors explode into flame when chucked), the hospital is besieged(luckily the doctors have been well-versed in the art of precision scalpel throwing), and despite the military's theory of post mortem tox-ghoul indestructibility(We've estimated they can't be destroyed, after autopsying this here dead one), flames and well-placed lead to the dome does the bastards in, right proper.Miller and wife make it to an abandoned gas station, where they share stale coffee, speculation towards man's responsibility for the countrywide terror spree, and a couple of heartily wooden laughs(!), despite said epidemic, which the military continues to suppress knowledge of to the public, long after they've failed to contain it.In the end, they're rescued in the nick of time by Holmes-in-a-helicopter, but his wife plummets from the sky to her death, unable to hold on long enough.Dean wakes up from his horrible dream alongside his wife in time to rush to the airport with his cameraman for an exclusive interview with Hagenbeck, when an unidentified Hercules transport emergency lands on the runway.Surrounded by security and police, the door slowly begins to open, titles reading "The nightmare becomes reality" flash across the screen, and the credits roll.

Pass the claret to me, Barrett.
As you might have guessed, the infelicitous Stiglitz is even outperformed here by random muck-faced extras(both Dell'Acquas included), whose propensity to run up to the camera and posture dramatically in front of the lens to show off the cheap makeup appliances spirit gummed to their faces is a frequent occurence.Then again, none of the major characters emotes worth a good goddamn here, hardly detracting from the frenetic low brow ambience of the movie, also ushered along by an appropriately groovy Stelvio Cipriani soundtrack.Years after throwing down long dollars at Mondo Kim's(R.I.P.) in Manhattan for the Dutch import region 2 'Red Edition' from Laser Paradise, which suffered from possibly the most impoverished print transfer to disc this side of truck stop horror fifty packs, I spotted the recent out-of-print Blue Underground release at an F.Y.E. for roughly forty dollars less and jumped on it.Though the extras are sparse(a Lenzi interview, a trailer), the print is pretty gorgeous, far better than something like this really deserves.On the scale, one well-deserved wop isn't going to stop a rabid genre nut like you from seeking this one out and adding it to your collection forthwith.I know you guys by now.

Does this mean we're gonna have to sit through the whole goddamned thing again??

"Malabimba"(1979)d/Andrea Bianchi

Just when you thought Italian sleaze king Andrea Bianchi couldn't get any sleazier than fare like "Le notte del terrore(Burial Ground)" or "Nude per l'assassino(Strip Nude For Your Killer)",he out-sleazes himself,shooting a superlative slab of cinematic sleaze so sleazy your whole body'll be itchy hours after screening it.You might even feel the need to slip an extra fiver in the collection plate on Sunday.A mostly forgotten Mediterranean paen to The Exorcist,Malabimba focuses not on the strengths of its tribute;plot and strong character study,but in a scathing attack against religious beliefs,moral fiber,and family values, pushes the envelope right to the goddamned post office.In tonight's entry the director replaces black-gloved killers and bobbler-biting midget zombies with oversexed teenaged girls,boatloads of profanity and blasphemies,and inserted penetration shots and on camera fellatio.If directors were gauged on how many shots of pubic wool they could fit into eighty-eight minutes,Bianchi'd have rendered himself Ingmar Bergman here.Where other directors might have passed on or at least gently handled sensitive,potentially shocking subject matter like this,he cuts to the chase,and rolls the fuck around in it like a prize hog in the smelliest trough.In other words,you won't wanna miss this one!

Bimba(Katell Laennec)browses her own bobblers.
Damned seances.Always shattering the tranquility of otherwise normal families,or so it seems.Tonight's story focuses on the once rich,always morally bankrupt family of Andrea (Enzo Fisichella),who can't afford his castle payments anymore.Give me some of those problems,buddy. Wracked by memories of his dead wife Daniela, he makes arrangements for a seance(Cazzo no!) to contact her spirit,but the medium (Elisa Mainardi) instead ressurects a foul,dick-crazed banshee named Lucrezia,who abruptly rents out the soul of Andrea's sixteen-year-old daughter Bimba (Katell Laennec). Andrea's mother encourages him to marry the curvaceous and sensual Nais (Patrizia Webley),a former prostitute and the wife of his bed-ridden paralyzed brother Adolfo (Giuseppe Marrocu),so they can continue to live the life of Riley on poor Adolfo's lira once the burden of his care is lifted by the Grim Reaper.Nais,a creation paste queen of the lowest order,willingly carries out the plan,blue-balling Andrea while simultaneously sexing up her shaft-on-the-side,Giorgio (Giancarlo Del Duca).Think Young and the Restless,if Satan was a recurring character...

Errr,my class ring...seem to have lost it in here...somewhere...
Speaking of young and restless,Bimba bungs her chastity down the lavvy at this point,turning into a blasphemy-spouting,junk grabbing,crotch displaying bundle of hormones.Her family's doctor slags it off as a sex disorder,but Lucrezia's in there,just like Prego sauce,if Prego suddenly made you display your hairy crotch to your guests while calling your granny an old whore at the dinner table(save talk like that for the parlour,young lady!),fuck your stuffed animal collection(I hear the Christmas elf knows how to pound a vadge),or suddenly tongue kissing your father(!) while jostling him by the berries(!!).It seems Lucrezia's spirit has a hard on for old Adolfo's nurse,Sister Sofia.You can probably figure out where this is going.After Bimba slinks into Uncle Adolfo's room,strips,shows the old boy her hairy bush and budding hardbody,she takes out the cripple's cock and sucks him off(!!!),which kills the poor bastard.After watching some appropriately hairy inserted hardcore segments with the possessed young girl,the nun does the only thing that will save her immortal soul.Did you guess lesbian sex?Give yourself a pat on the back.The horny succubus then transfers into the nun Exorcist-style,which causes the sister to chuck herself from the castle to the pavement below,rather than walk the earth forever rubbing her own fun circles,like some Madonna video.The young girl and her father reunite,and this time,nobody's junk gets rubbed.

"There's enough wool there to knit an afghan!" says grossed-out Granny.
Some of you out there might be appalled at the nakedness in a few of tonight's screenshots(frankly,they might be the first bit of womanhood some of you might have ever seen,sad effers),and really,after watching this one,you might find yourself running for the nearest bible,dildo,or both,if I know one or two of you.Tonight's entry is available through the superior Diabolik DVD,and Severin Films did a smashing job restoring most of the sleaze on display here,although the deleted scenes look to originate from a grainy video at the bottom of some pervert's underwear drawer somewhere.The optional English subs really don't do any justice to the steady stream of verbal Italian filth spewed throughout the production,so learn some Italian,dammit.You won't find Dick Smith-level possession makeups here,or any makeup,which is a tribute in part to the acting skills of Laennec,who didn't do anything else,sadly.Mariela Giordano was also in Giallo a Venezia,Patrick Vive Ancora,and of course,famously in Le notte del terrore,among a slew of other genre pics.Though the hardcore sex and blasphemy might be a little tough to get through for some(nobody I know or wanna know,trust me),and I've given the film just one BW,on a good night it merits two scented handiwipes and six or so ounces of moisture locking lotion,as well.

That ain't bragiole in those drawers.

"Cannibal Holocaust"(1979)d/Ruggero Deodato

As we take a day to honour our mothers,here at the Wop we'll be examining the mother of all exploitation films.You know you've been waiting for it.Some of you may have even been covering yourselves in dried mud,chasing your girlfriends around the apartment with foot long stone dildos in anticipation.Whatever stirs your mostaccioli,say I.Ruggero Deodato,one of my favorite directors bar none,first set foot in cannibal territory with his effort,Ultimo Mondo Cannibale(1977),but it wasn't until this entry,a tribute to the cinema verite' styles of fellow Italian documentary filmmakers Prospero,Jacopetti,and Antonio Climati,that he blew the lid off the sub-genre so effectively that he was forced to reveal his special effects in Italian and British courts proving that he wasn't guilty of murder(!),that his actors hadn't died(only their careers had!),losing his film license for three years anyway due to the real animal cruelty rampant in tonight's film.It's been cut and re-cut,banned and unbanned all over the world to date,and thirty years later,hasn't lost one iota of unapologetic kick-you-in-the-yambag potency,to the tune of over two hundred million rumored box-office dollars worth.
So what exactly do we have before us on the big screen once we've cut through the hype and controversy?A relentless,savage,unflinching look at the media and society as a whole.Though he offers no answers,Deodato asks some interesting questions.Are we as civilized as we think we are?Is "civilization" all that it's cracked up to be?Don't look at me for answers either,I'm a half-step away from a Neanderthal most of the time,especially when I'm running low on cigarettes.

"Run to the hiiiiiilllsssss!"sings Mvogo,an Iron Maiden fan from way back.
Professor Monroe(Kerman),an NYU anthropologist,leads a rescue team into the heart of the Green Inferno of the Amazon to find a documentary film crew who has disappeared without a trace.With the help of two guides and a Yacumo indian captured by a military raid,the prof first stumbles upon a Yacumo male using a stone dildo to rape his galpal on the muddy shore,then bludgeoning her to death with it,as punishment for adultery.Afterwards,they negotiate the release of their dusky prisoner in return for safe passage to the Yacumo village.Monroe senses that the prior film crew really effed things up,due to the tension among the natives,but Miguel,one of the guides,gives the savages a shiny switchblade to play with,before the men search further into the treacherous jungle.The next day they encounter two warring tribes of cannibals,the Shamatari(tree people) and Yanomamo(swamp people),the latter of which they save from certain gut-chomping rainforest death,and are invited back to the Yanomamo village out of gratitude.Monroe bathes in the river with several Yanomamo women,who snicker at and yank on his Euro-pecker,after which they take him to a makeshift shrine consisting of film cannisters and the bones of the film crew his party had been searching for.After showing the head savage how to capture himself wailing on a tape recorder,the tribesman trades him the reels of film the ill-fated crew had with them when they became so much prosciutto-in-khakis.

"Dear diary...I think Mbete hates my hat,and I'm still carrying around entrails?Is that what they call 'em?Yeah,entrails."
Back in New York,tv execs tell Monroe they'd like him to host the public airing of the footage the team captured before losing their lives.He agrees,but only after screening the film himself.They show the professor some of Alan Yates'(Carl Gabriel Yorke) earlier documentary work,The Last Road to Hell,stating matter-of-factly,that most of the executions on the screen were staged by the director himself,for more sensational results.The first reel documents the team's descent into the jungle,where one of the guides is bitten by a poisonous snake and dies.As they encounter a gaggle of Yacumo,Jack(Perry Pirkanen) shoots one in the leg so the crew can follow him without difficulty,raising protests from Monroe concerning their unorthodox methodology as the projectionist changes reels.As the second reel begins,the filmmakers force an entire village of Yacumo into their huts and burn them alive on camera,in order to stage a scene for their "documentary".He then sees native women performing a primitive abortion on a young tribeswoman,stuffing the foetus in the mud afterwards.The television execs decide to show the footage publicly,raising more protest from the professor,who beseeches them to watch the final two reels before making their decision.They witness the males gangraping a young Yanomamo girl,as script girl Faye(Francesca Ciardi) tries vainly to stop them.They kill the girl off-camera,impaling her ass-to-mouth on a wooden post,blaming it on the tribal elders as "an obscure sexual rite" on-camera afterwards.The Yanomamo then attack the film crew as revenge for the young girl,and when Jack gets impaled by an incoming spear,Alan shoots his friend so that the remaining three can escape while the cannibals castrate,eviscerate,fry up on an open fire,and finally chew on the bastard.The Indios then capture Faye,gangraping her in mid-air before beheading her,as Mark(Luca Barbareschi) films the girl's horrible come-uppance.The tribe finally locates the remaining two filmmakers as the camera captures Alan's final bloody death stare as the reel ends.Dumbfoundedly slienced,the execs wisely change their minds about airing the footage.

I know chicks who could shimmy down this post and back up again in time for lunch without batting an eyelash.
Deodato,who got his chops in the director's chair on Django as an assistant, would go on to direct genre staples such as "La Casa Sperduto nel Parco" with David Hess and Giovanni Lombardo Radice,and "Cut and Run" with Michael "Hills Have Eyes" Berryman,before scoring himself a cannibalistic cameo in Eli Roth's "Hostel:Part Two" in 2007.The maestro himself and most of the original cast make regular rounds in horror conventions,much to the delight of fanboys everywhere.Most recently,he's begun pre-production on "Cannibals",originally announced as a sequel to his masterpiece,later downgraded to "companion piece".Either way,I'll be eager to see it.I can't in good conscience recommend this amazing film to everybody,as the brutality included therein will no doubt overwhelm those of the weaker constitution,but for those who possess a love for over-the-top cinematic violence and have the cast-iron stomachs to back it up,this is an absolute must-see.The highest possible rating is well-earned in this case.Viva Deodato!

After a simple,yet primitive medical procedure,Jack Anders was finally a Justin Bieber fan.

"Paura nella città dei morti viventi"(1980)d/Lucio Fulci

Three years later,I'm finally covering one of the maestro's films over here.My chum Nigel has done and continues to do a bang up job tackling the genre films of mother Italy,specifically those of Fulci,so I really haven't been in any hurry to cover any myself.Some might say I go through periods where I'm not in any hurry to cover anything over here,but those individuals,frankly,are dicks.It takes one to know one,as the old addage goes.I touched base with some true genre fans at a party the other night,and in between partying into the wee hours,we shot the crap about a lot of movies,mainly Italian horror,and even threw in Buio Omega for some quality tit-sucking,entrail-fondling,neck-chunking fun before the smoke finally cleared.I had such a balls out good time that I decided it was high time we got down to some quality Fulci here at the Wop.
I was probably thirteen years old when I first saw tonight's entry,dumping fifty clams on the Paragon vhs at the local record store when they had a notably virtuous video section full of genre titles.With the Zombi 2 one-sheet still adorning my bedroom wall as a trophy of my first theatrical experience with Lucio years earlier,I called the boys down to the parlour,to share in my second unforgettable,gore-spurting run in.If you're near to being a scruffy old ruffian as I am,you'll remember Paragon's glorious trailers flashing across the screen before the feature began,and with craptastic titles like Boarding House,Hotwire!,The One-Armed Executioner,Necromancy,and Funeral Home being previewed(along with tonight's entry,under its U.S. release title,"Gates of Hell"),we were already well-entertained before strains of Fabio Frizzi's superlative score signalled the rollercoaster ride we were all in for.What followed,droogies,I'll interpret for you now...

A bit early in the season for a maggot storm,eh,Carlo?
After seeing Father Thomas lynch himself in a fog-engulfed cemetery in faraway Dunwich,purposely opening one of the seven gates of Hell and allowing the dead to rise and to squeeze the backs of the heads of the living until their brains bobble out like so much crumbled feta cheese, during a groovy seance somewhere in New York,psychic Mary Woodhouse(Catriona MacColl) eats psychic link-breaking heart stoppage death.The cops watch fire shoot from the floor to the ceiling and back again,then blame it all on the psychics' reefer smoking party.Luckily for Mary,an investigative reporter named Peter Bell(Christopher George)happens to be visiting her grave plot when she comes to inside her coffin,about to be buried alive.Oh yeah,and the fact they chose not to embalm her beforehand,for whatever reason...Bell hears wild stories about the city.The cursed city.The cursed city of the dead.The cursed city of the living dead,as described in the Book of Enoch,where he and Mary must travel to destroy the priest's body and effectively close the portal to Hell before All Saints' Day.Meanwhile,in Dunwich,all sorts of fucked up shit is already happening,and local rubber woman-enthusiast/creepy retard-pervert,Bob(Giovanni Lombardo Radice/John Morghen,the focal point for on camera abuse by many of the top Italian genre directors of the day),usually isn't too far away from the goings on.

Daniela Doria shows her true feelings about the new Wopsploitation header.
First,Bob witnesses the dead priest's appearance and subsequent worm n' mud face moosh of a girl named Emily,who abruptly dies of fright.Then two locals'(Michele Soavi and Daniela Doria) parked car petting session gets interrupted by Father Thomas' sudden materialization,causing the girl to bleed from the eyes,then upchuck all of her internal organs(I'm pretty sure I caught a heart and liver spilling out during the melee),before squeezing the grey stuff out of the back of her suitor's head,as a full-on zombie.Poor Bob,while looking for a place to sleep,gets busted smoking pot with a young girl in her garage by a furious father,who abruptly shishkabobs his head with a table drill.That'll learn 'im!For Gerry and Sandra(Carlo De Mejo and Janet Agren),things aren't much better after combining efforts with Peter and Mary,who've just arrived on the scene,as they get caught amidst one helluva indoor live maggot storm.Meanwhile,zombies capable of appearing and disappearing,levitating,and the aforementioned dome-squeeze are popping up all over town as the four frantically rush to the cemetery where the priest's body has been interred.Emily pops the skullcap of Sandra,who later pops Peter's loaf down in Thomas's family vault,leaving Gerry and Mary to deal with the priest himself.The unholy padre begins to make Mary's eyes bleed,foreshadowing an upcoming entrail-hurl,but is interrupted by Gerry,who runs the priest through with a large wooden cross to the labonza.As the zombies all around them catch fire and slump to the ground,the two survivors realize they've won the day.But,outside the tomb, as Emily's younger brother runs towards them,they begin to recoil in horror,as a freezeframe of the boy shatters to pieces.Whaaaaat?

Bob(Johnny Morghen)eats shiny,spinning,head-skewering,drill press death.
Originally meant to have a happy ending,Fulci encountered problems editing the film,which forced him to rush the head-scratching finale,forever adding it to the list of non-linear classics like L'Aldila(1979) and Argento's Inferno the same year.Despite what nonsense grit-eating freaks might type out of their asses about this flick on other review sites,this is among the maestro's creepiest,most atmopsheric work during his zombie period.Sergio Salvati's camerawork fleshes out a gloomy,foreboding landscape from which there is a harrowing feeling of no escape,to which Frizzi's stellar soundtrack only heightens.The performances are solid,and Morghen entertains,as always,as the lovably tragic kook.Though it may not sit atop a list of my favorite Fulci efforts,it remains a solid,and memorable ride,nonetheless,and well worthy of repeated viewings,which,you should have under your belt already if Italian horror films are indeed your bag.How about Stacie Ponder,though,huh?And to Lucio...Manco i tua cinematografo, io mi rammarico della tua morte troppo presto, e tu sei il maestro per sempre a me.

I wanted to squeeze the brains out of the back of Christopher George's head for years.


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