"Il gatto nero" (1989) d/ Luigi Cozzi

While we Italian genre maniacs were all waiting patiently for the final installment of Dario Argento's Three Mothers trilogy at the tail end of the eighties, director Luigi Cozzi,  of Starcrash (1978) and Contamination (1980) fame,  went ahead and delivered his own take on the witchy goings on,  in the form of tonight's review, with splashes of colored light, a pinch of gore, and obligatory rubbery sorceress action courtesy of Rosario Prestopino. The film, alternately known as Demons 6: De Profundis, showcases the familiar genre faces of Urbano Barberini, Florence Guerin, director Michele Soavi in a brief cameo, and of course, Caroline Munro. Wouldn't be a proper Cozzi film without her, and in this particular case, lots of her.


"Stress lines, cover wear, staining...and you call this copy VG/FN??"
We meet a rising actress and new mother named Anne (Florence Guerin) as she's working on a formulaic horror film based on Poe's The Black Cat for a hack director named Carl (Michele Soavi...yeah, right!) while her husband Marc (Urbano Barberini) jockeys to get his next project funded. With the upcoming film's subject matter concerning the third, and most horrible of the Mothers of Sorrow, as imagined by author Thomas De Quincey, and Marc even name dropping Dario Argento along the way, is it any wonder that such a blasphemous production would awaken a witch named Levana, with copyright infringement, possession, and bloody witchcraft-based death in mind. The rubbery resurrected spellcaster takes her would be cinematic namesake's role research personally, infiltrating her dreams with space footage borrowed from Cozzi's Hercules movies,  repeatedly visiting from inside her mirror, Exorcist-style projectile vomiting, and even haunting the poor girl's refrigerator and creating refrigerator repairmen mirages, along the way. Just stay outta the veggie crisper, Levana, come on now.


She's Lump, she's Lump, she's Lump. She's got a rubbery head.
Of course, the film's producer, is an invalid named Leonard Levin (Brett Halsey) who may or may not be in secret cahoots with Levana,  having that cleverly homonymous last name and all, and Anne's actress/gal pal and girlfriend to Marc's scriptwriter,  the ever-mugging Nora (Caroline Munro)'s sun-scorched leathery skin is too similar in texture to Levana's latex black magic acne problem for her own good, methinks. Oh yeah, people get murdered along the way, there's a close up neck ventilation, a slow motion exploding midsection that will more than remind some of you of Cozzi's earlier Alien (1979) rip-off, Contamination (1980), and a television screen that vomits entrails and soupy goop in a similar fashion to that famous Cronenberg 1981 floor model. Levana kidnaps Anna's newborn, with designs on sacrificing her, naturally, but Anna allies herself with the spirit of a fairy, and that can only mean one thing: it's time for a lackluster, low budgeted, laser effect-packed "what the fuck just happened?" finale. Roll credits.


When Celiac sufferers eat pizza made with high gluten flour, this is often the tragic result.
Whether you consider this one Demons 6, Suspiria 3, or The Black Cat (I don't really consider it a true sequel to anything, really, more of an ultra cheap spin off), depends on what characteristic rises to the surface from Cozzi's cloudy soup of genre elements for you, I guess. If it's poxy eighties hair metal, nonsensical gore, and Urbano Barberini, then you'd roll with Demons 6. If the colored filters, cues lifted from Goblin's Suspiria score, and direct references to the Argento film stand out, you'd probably call it Suspiria 3. There's barely anything Black Cat-ish to speak of, here, though Fulci allegedly expressed some desire in taking the chair on the movie, despite having already covered all things ebony feline himself, some eight years earlier. You see where I'm going with this, don't you? On the scale, Il gatto's much too incoherent and balls up to merit anything more than a single Wop, though you completists and trash lovers might want to hunt down the Japanese VHS, which may very well still be the only legitimate release of the film to date, just the same.
 

Cheap laser visual effects. Nothing embodies the powers of eighties-style witchery like them.

"Contamination"(1980)d/Luigi Cozzi

You've gotta like a guy like Luigi Cozzi,the man responsible for such cult gems as Starcrash(1979),De Profundis(1989),Paganini Horror(1989),and forgettable 1975 giallo The Killer Must Kill Again,as a man(among many,your humble N included)who enjoyed Ridley Scott's Alien(1979)so much that he set out to film a sequel/homage of sorts,cleverly entitled,"Alien Arrives on Earth".The only problem here,was the definite lack of interest Italian studios showed towards sci-fi fare at the time,forcing Cozzi to disguise his little sci-fi ditty as a horror movie,and even then,producer Claudio Mancini kept sticking his mediterranean proboscis in Luigi's business,demanding his film be titled "Contamination",after a China Syndrome(1979)rip off he'd been working on.Mancini also pushed for James Bond-ish elements in the film,and vetoed Luigi's choice of the luscious Caroline Munro,who'd starred in his earlier Starcrash effort,in the female lead in favor of Louise Marleau,an older,saggy actress who isn't the least bit sexy at all,against the poor director's wishes.Cozzi also wanted a stop motion animated creature for the film's finale,which was ruled out,given the micro-budget he was given to work with.With all these factors against him,he still managed to churn out an enjoyable hunk of Italian B-movie madness,surely the answer to the eternal question:What if Italians set out to rip off Alien(1979) with a budget of thirty-eight bucks?

Give him a minute,he's gotten the wind knocked out of him...
A seemingly abandoned freighter drifts into New York Harbor,carrying the mutilated remnants of its former crew and large green pulsating eggs hidden in containers of coffee,obviously some sort of interplanetary promotional giveaway of sorts.The crew sent in the examine the bloody aftermath soon experiences the secret force of the mysterious orbs firsthand.When the eggs heat up,they explode,showering anyone unlucky enough to be standing within the trajectory with an acidic fluid,which in turn,cause the unlucky bastard to explode from the midsection out.No baby aliens skitting across the floor.Just chunks of labonza scattered to and fro.The military calls in Colonel Stella Holmes(Marleau),a frumpy middle-aged broad who doesn't mind getting slapped in the grillpiece. She quickly brainstorms that the eggs may have something to do with that...failed mission to Mars.With the enlisted help of police lieutenant Aris(Marino Masé),a survivor of the boat incident who volunteers his assistance with a pimpslap,and yaps endlessly about his own balls,she hunts down the surviving astronaut,Commander Hubbard(McCulloch),who suffered a nervous breakdown and subsequently became a raging drunk. She presses the space lush for answers("If you're always in this condition it's quite obvious you couldn't get it up, even if you used a crane”,she tells him.Ouch!),and after brief resistance,he reluctantly agrees to accompany the colonel and lieutenant to ...a coffee plantation in Columbia?

Mix the human stomach with my Aunt Josephine's Sunday sauce and this is the sad result.
To say things bog down a smidge in Columbia,is like saying American film studios rarely utilize originality these days.There's a limply uninspired romantic subplot,and an awful lot of 007-esque elements that come into play that help drag the film down.Colonel Holmes gets locked in a bathroom with a glowing green throbber while both men bicker amongst each other in the hotel hallway as to which one she wants to give her punched out meatsock to(keep that shit,baby).This goes on for about four days,by my estimation.Once they infiltrate the warehouse,it all becomes painfully obvious that Hubbard's former astronaut colleague is alive and well and mind-controlled by an alien intelligence bent on wiping out the human race and conquest of the earth.How do we know this?The fucking guy explains it all to our heroes,and even gives them a tour of the fucking operation a la James Bond before sending them off to fend for themselves against...the Alien Cyclops,a terrifying blend of rubber,vaccuum tubes,and an automobile headlight that abruptly eats the police lieutenant...or,I should say,the police lieutenant has great difficulty climbing and pushing himself into the alien's foodtube.About four days later,the possessed astronaut's belly explodes in slo-mo,and the colonel and recovering drunk astronaut manage to set the otherworldly queen on fire,avoiding her deadly form of mind control and saving the world at the same time.

Martian landscape or Madonna's uterus?You be the judge.
The multiple slow motion midsection explosions bought Cozzi's film a spot on the UK's Video Nasty list,released uncut years later with a 15 certificate.It was released in the US on video in truncated form as "Toxic Spawn" and "Alien Contamination",before seeing an uncut remastered version appear on dvd from the excellent Blue Underground label.The ugly Canadian actress Marleau most recently translated The Vagina Monologues in French.Big deal.McCulloch has enjoyed a long career in film and television.Cozzi was palgued by budgetary restrictions throughout his career as a director,before moving on to manage and operate Dario Argento's movie memorabilia store,Profundo Rosso,in Rome.Tonight's entry has its shortcomings,granted,but remains a source for a lot of low budgeted fun for the right cult audience.It explodes from the chest in gruelling slow motion with a rating of one wop on the scale.It's time to see the cyclops now...

In the foggy warehouse,the Alien Cyclops makes sure she has her high beam on.