"Macchie solari" (1975) d/Armando Crispino

Tonight's movie, whose title translates to "Sun Spots" ( misleadingly released as Autopsy here in the States two years later), stands as an odd entry in the gialli sweepstakes, missing the trademark black gloved killer so prevalent in other films of the genre, but what it lacks in convention it more than makes up for with heaping dollops of sleazy sex, hallucinatory nightmare sequences, and the usual stellar evocative soundtrack from Ennio Morricone, not to mention one of the more delirious premises you're ever gonna find in movies like this. Director Crispino handles the frantic workload with lurid zeal, as though he himself had been affected by the magnetic activity on the star's surface, with an able cast that's headed by usual genre suspects, Mimsy Farmer and Ray Lovelock.


"Let go of my hand already, hippie, my nipples are getting fenceburn."
After opening with a disturbing montage of a sudden rash of suicides attributed to the titular solar phenomena, we head to the Roman morgue, where Simona ( Farmer) hallucinates the reanimation of a chunky female stabbing victim while other corpses come to life and copulate amid the limp come-on's of her assistant Ivo (Ernesto Colli), before her boyfriend Edgar (Lovelock) surprises her on a slab. Later, the body of a leggy redhead (Gaby Wagner) turns up on one of the young pathologist's gurneys just a day after meeting her, the victim of an apparent gun-inflicted suicide on the beach, with Ivo lustily squeezing her dead boobs like a package of ass paper on a supermarket shelf, and just as Simona is laboriously working on her thesis paper on real and staged suicides, what luck. While dining out with her playboy father, Lello (Carlo Cattaneo), she has a sun-induced migraine that tunes her into a clue about the deceased ginger, leading her back to the morgue, where she meets Father Lenox (Barry Primus), the dead girl's brother and a race car driver-turned-priest(!), who believes his sister's death was no suicide...


Empty a bottle of limoncello at the morgue, and this is what happens.
Lenox pummels the superintendent's face in the stairwell with his holy mitts, using the same reckless abandon in investigating his sister's death that forced him to prematurely retire from the racing circuit. As Simona gets closer to the truth at the criminal museum, a booby trap nearly erases her from the equation. Edgar walks away from his accident at the speedway, and shows  Simona a vintage pornography slide show that ends in tears and a non-bj (the worst kind, I tell you). Lello does a high window flopper that leaves him mute and paralyzed while his daughter, who never bought a blouse with buttons, parries an attempted morgue-rape by Ivo with a fork. Finally, she goes in for some nudie prod games with Edgar, only realizing mid-coitus that she's in love with Father Lenox. Lello flatlines in the middle of answering a question about his attempted suicide, and in the end, surprise... it's Edgar, who's the right homicidal bastard, scheming with Lenox's sister to rob Simona's father of his fortune. After narrowly escaping a staged double suicide, the priest and doctor rush to the square for a high scaffolding intervention that naturally goes badly. Cue: stock footage of solar flares and Morricone.


...because"Wet Mimsy" doesn't need a witty punchline, at all, really.
Crispino's other directorial efforts include his first attempt at giallo, 1972's L'etrusco uccide ancora aka/ The Dead Are Alive, John il bastardo aka/ John the Bastard (1967), a western, and 1968's Commandos, a war movie starring Lee Van Cleef. The Chicago-born Farmer was no stranger to gialli, herself, appearing in no less than Argento's 4 mosche di velluto grigio aka/ Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971) and 1974's Il profumo della signora in nero aka/ The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974). Lovelock, always a favorite, regularly worked with directors like Fulci, Deodato, Grau, Di Leo, and Gariazzo throughout the sixties and seventies. On the scale, Autopsy garners a solid three wops, and comes recommended for anybody with a taste for the lurid side of genre film from the boot. Check it out!


...looks like another case of "Irish Sunglasses".

"La settima donna"(1978)d/Franco Prosperi

We'll continue not being very nice to women tonight, with a Last House on the Left clone from Franco Prosperi, but not the Prosperi that's known as half of the Italian dynamic documentary duo responsible for mondo hits like Mondo Cane(1964), Africa addio(1966), and Addio Zio Tom(1976), to be sure.To flesh out this Mediterranean rape/revenge rip-off, known outside of Italy as 'Last House on the Beach', Prosperi dresses center stage with able Euro-genre vets Ray Lovelock, who also croons "Place for the Landing" on the Roberto Pregadio soundtrack and provides his own English dub, and Flavia, her heretical self, Florinda Bolkan, revisiting a nun's habit here for some admittedly pretty sleazy goings-on, though most of today's jaded genre crowd will probably find 'Beach' too deficient in the blood, sex, and nudity categories to enjoy it very much.With those desensitized rascals out of earshot, I can promulgate the director's choice, instead, to focus his lens on the horrified expressions of the victims' faces rather than the potential grue, unlike so many of his countrymen of the day in the trade, but with mixed effectiveness; one rape victim looks less violated than dumbfounded during her ordeal, and even the most brutal, humiliating act in the film plays out like a Looney Tune on Phencyclidine.Much of the distress of the deplorable deeds that transpire in this one is rendered flaccid by the anonymity of many of the young girls' characters, who deliver no real dialogue, have no discernible idiosyncracies, and huddle defenselessly waiting for the next atrocity to happen to them.Still, there's enough of what makes exploitation flicks from the boot so damned enjoyable present here to merit a look-see, with shots of lush outdoor scenery juxtaposed with obligatory seventies soundtrack of happenin' porno-esque disco music and expectedly humorous ADR dubbing on the English track(“Why, you dirty bitch! You think we’re just kidding?!”, "This one's a 100 percent virgin!" etc., etc.).The film, long unavailable in North America, has since been presented uncut on disc by those fine folks at Severin.

We'll return to "When Reiki Gets Serious" right after these words from our sponsors...
A gang of three faceless Italian goons show a propensity for senseless violence during a bank robbery, when one of the men ices a teller for the hell of it before their getaway Citroen forces them to detour their escape to a large villa on a desolate beach that's occupied by a young nun named Sister Cristina(Florinda Bolkan), who just happens to be chaperoning five religious schoolgirls as they rehearse A Midsummer Night's Dream for an upcoming Shakespeare festival, decked out in fanciful papier mâché animal head masks.Ignoring all standard guest protocol, Walter(Flavio Andreini) proceeds to bash the villa maid's dome in with a household iron(!) while Nino(Stefano Cedrati) attacks Eliza(Sherry Buchanan) and gets shanked in the thigh with a sharp comb, for his inappropriate carnality.Forced to occupy the cottage until Nino's leg heals appropriately, the boy band-esque outlaws turn to the occupants of the fairer sex(who don't let criminal pervert kidnappers stop them from breaking a bobbler out at any juncture, mind you) for their misogynistic amusement.First, they force the girls to sunbathe topless at gunpoint with groping and ogling thrown in, free of charge, then making them watch a girl shake her groove thang around while naked on television.After some spirited verbal humiliation, the robbers discover Cristina's religious background, forcing her to strip down("You'd never guess you have such nice curves under those rags!"), before dressing her in a traditional habit, which naturally serves as a catalyst for much emotional malaise and physical manhandling at knifepoint, to the seeming dismay of good samaritan-slash-criminal, Aldo(Ray Lovelock).Why, he's not nearly as awful a sociopathic rapist as his two accomplices, is he...

Tramp buys the farm in the deleted "I bet I could slash fifty throats" scene from Cool Hand Luke(1967).
Though Aldo isn't willing to punctuate what seems to be a mere job to him with rape-tastic extracurriculars, nor defend the helpess women to any major degree against his fellow captors, he does develop an unlikely repoire with Margaret(Luisa Maneri), explaining that he never entered the bank during the robbery, waiting in the getaway car all along, though, through flashbacks it's revealed that he's a big fat liar, instead, having actually fired on the teller's desks and killing the hostage himself during the standoff with security.Eventually, the thugs divulge the embarrassing secret to her girls that Cristina isn't as pure as she makes herself out to be, causing the girls to lose much of their trust in her, and when Nino and Walter double-team Lucia(Laura Trotter) while Aldo forces the young nun to bear witness, it's slo-mo, disco themed, gang rape gold, with numerous mugging facial close ups.After much sunbathing, lounging around, drinking wine, Nino reading Faulkner's Sanctuary(get it?), and many cartoonish backhanders later(this one's ripe with 'em), Walter responds to one of the girl's failed escape attempts by forcibly fingering her(!) then murdering her by repeatedly shoving a bulky walking stick into her gravy boat(!!).In the finale, Cristina is forced to choose between the cross of her religious beliefs, or the bloody vigilante justice necessary to protect the lives of her remaining students.Spoiler:She gives a begging Nino a lethal injection after his wound goes badly infected, shoots Walter, and after one of the girls buckshots up Aldo's labonza and he stubbornly clings to life, all the girls clobber him to death with sticks(!!!).

"Raised by MASTODONS?!!! Why I'll...", growled Bamm-Bamm Rubble.
This Prosperi, also known as Frank Shannon, has a considerably less impressive filmography than his more famous namesake-in-film, helming movies like Mondo cannibale(1980) aka/White Cannibal Queen, on which he shared the director's chair with none other then Jess Franco, sword n' sandal epic Ercole al centro della terra(1961), which he co-directed with Mario Bava himself, Tecnica di un omicidio(1966), and 1976's Pronto ad uccidere, another collaborative effort with Lovelock, who provides an excellent half hour interview on the Severin disc, shedding light on Italy's hipness with exotic, foreign-sounding names at the time, his experiences working with the director, and how perception over the film's gratuitous violence and overall mean-spiritedness has changed over the years.Bolkan made a name for herself in Italo-fare like 1970's Indagine su un cittadino al di sopra di ogni sospetto, Fulci's Una lucertola con la pelle di donna(1971) and Non si sevizia un paperino(1972), as well as La caduta degli dei(1969) for Luchino Visconti.Among the young victims here, are Sherry Buchanan, who appeared in things like Tentacoli(1977), and Zombi Holocaust(1980), and Laura Trotter, of Incubo sulla città contaminata(1980) fame.Two Wops on the scale for this mostly standard slice of sleazy Italian cash-in fare that you'll likely be disappointed by, if you're expecting something along the lines of L'ultimo treno della notte(1978) or La casa sperduta nel parco(1980).Hell, Tarantino himself must've really liked it, judging by the...ahem, 'homage' ending of Deathproof(2004).Subject yourselves to it, I tell you.

Rimuovere il mio bastone da passeggio fuori della tua fica, per favore.

"Avere vent'anni"(1978)d/Fernando Di Leo

We're gonna draw focus upon some rare genre gems in the coming weeks here at the Wop, so keep your eyes peeled.Also you may have noticed the new warning:adult content page I've been forced to slap up recently, due to content complaints, I'm guessing, from someone who's no champion of boobs, blood, or bush; or perhaps it was my colorfully abrasive descriptive style that done me in, either way, the warning's here to stay for now, so just bypass it to get right down to the nitty gritty, as a filth-peddling hippie band that I hate used to sing(I think Di Leo's with me).And "Up yer nose wit a rubber hose!" to whatever sorry bastard dimed me out.I'll take it out on yer mudder's mons pubis the next time I'm over there teaching her a lesson in humility with my big ass-spankin' mitts.Oh yeah, speaking of hippies, that brings us to our movie.
Tonight's review is an odd little number from the gent who brought us La bestia uccide a sangue freddo(1971) and Vacanze per un massacro(1980), as well as Italian crime dramas like Shoot First,Die Later(1976) and I padroni della città aka/Mr. Scarface that same year.This film didn't really fit into any sub-genre popular at the time in Italy and therein lies the attraction, for me anyway.It kinda plays like your typical Italian sexploitation movie right up to its "Huh?!!" ending.More about that later.Though Lilli Carati certainly matches up to my brunette-oriented lust criteria, once coming second as Miss Italy in the mid-seventies, my ocular magnet prize in tonight's feature is the luscious Gloria Guida(Miss Teen Italy '74), hands down.Is it any wonder when they repackaged the film for American distribution as "To Be Twenty", they changed the bummer ending and marketed it as a devil-may-care pro-hippie sex comedy.By the end of this entry, you'll realize the absurdity of that statement.Oh yes, there will be spoilers.

There's something missing here.If you said "B.W.", give yourselves five points.
Lia(Lilli Carati)and Tina(Gloria Guida) connect while skinny-dipping in the ocean after a love-in on the beach.Both young, beautiful, and pissed off, the two striking Euro-drop outs set out to hitchhike their way to Rome, finding difficulty doing so despite their ample cleavage and gams-fer-days on display.In Rome, blessed/armed with their bountiful busoms, obscenity-laden mouths, and an inborn hatred for the morality of capitalism, the she-hippies happily shoplift their way to the commune of Nazariota(Vittorio Caprioli), where they hope to score some free room and board,and some Bohemian Roman dick while they're at it.The fat hippie guru breaks it to them that life in the city costs money, and if they have none, they'd better be prepared to to do some work("Get pissed off in the kitchen" he tells them matter-of-factly).Hell, even potential lovers are hard to come by here, either too zooted on drugs or too unwashed to get next to.Finally, Nazariota forces them to fuck for the rent, resulting in a sizeable orgy of softcore proportions before the watchful eyes of a mime named Coco who adds his own unnerving interpretive hand gestures, creeping out the guys and leaving the girls unsated, so they explore each other instead in a sapphic duet afterwards, culminating in a music video-esque carefree traipse through the streets to an Italian pop tune; sort of a dated discomercial for freedom.Ironically, an independent film crew shoots a documentary on the very same subject at the commune, where feminist actresses recite the works of Valerie Solanas, after which, Lia scores a lay from a smacked-out hunk of he-hippie(Ray Lovelock) she'd had her eyes on.Tired of sexing up the resident burnouts, the girls find themselves pawning encyclopedias door to door, spurring on some more flesh-based hijinks.

Young, beautiful, and pissed off.Just how I like 'em!
Next, the commune gets raided in a crackdown on "revolutionary activity"(totalitarian v. hippie makes for some notable interrogation exchanges) and they're all hauled off to the klink, ending with the girls kicked out of town, as a pair of indolent hookers.This 'freedom' gets more glamorous by the minute.As they bid the region farewell, unfazed by their recent public humiliation, the girls make a pit stop at a country family-style diner for some jukebox-fueled ass-shaking in short shorts to a crowd of male patrons.Some of the guys groove on their sultry carnal vibes, but others are gobsmacked by the disrespectful display of girl goodies, especially when the hot young chicks seem to be more into each other, and not the daring young dagos who break out an Italian chicken dance for the attention of the scruffy tearaways, now affectionately referred to as the "two little bitches" by the increasingly brutal male crowd whose muscling and groping leads the girls to break away and out of the cafe.They walk along a lonely country road towards the main highway when they're surpised by several carloads of men from the diner with not a single good intention amongst the lot of them.A shortlived chase into the woods ensues, but the girls are captured, stripped, and beaten.Lia gets her skull cracked with a tree branch, while Tina is held upside down and raped with one(!)."Teasing..." says one of the men as the group disperses.The girls' tape player is accidentally kicked on, cuing some sugary pop music which brings us to the credits.

All the Italian kids enjoyed hours of wholesome fun with their new Stretch Putanna action figure.
The American cut ends with the girls, about to brutally raped and murdered in the woods, pardoned at the last possible moment by a warning that the police are on their way from one of the killers, leaving the film a brainless hippie tits n' ass-o-thon like so many clones in its wake, with precious little message or social commentary to pass along.The message of Di Leo's original cut is painfully clear:The cruel world has no place for such a blithe outlook.Powerful stuff, effectively delivered.The gorgeous Gloria Guida put in overtime in sexploitation work such as Blue Jeans(1975),The Teasers(1975), Indagine su un delitto perfetto(1978) and Prickly Pears(1980), before settling in as a regular on various Italian television series as genre vet Ray Lovelock did afterwards. Lilli Carati, on the other hand, unfortunately plummetted into a vortex of hard drugs and triple x pornography after 28 'legit' movies, appearing in five pornos helmed by Joe D'Amato, Giorgio Grand, and even Alex de Renzy.Pretty volcanic stuff, for what that's worth.Avoid the dumbed down U.S. cut, which happens to be included on the special edition dvd by Raro, but instead check out the original Italian print(also on the Raro release) to see a provocative and unforgettable movie.It's this version that merits three wops and a high recommendation.

...la vita è bella ad un'età di vent'anni... a meno che qualcuno stia inserendo un ramo di albero nella tua fica.

"Non si deve profanare il sonno dei morti"(1974)d/Jorge Grau

Tuesday morning here at Castle Wop,and seeing as I've thrown some stale fruit in the faces of my ghost writers,chained up down in the catacombs like the pitiful creatures they are,I don't see why we can't kick things up a notch for a change.I get a kick out of you cats n' chicks regularly reading my ramblings,and since more of you are doing it on a more frequent basis than ever before,I'm gonna touch on some true classics of genre cinema this week.Some of the directors I'll examine,I've never reviewed before,and being favorites of mine(and a lot of you out there,no doubt),I'll have to handle the entries with sap gloves...sorry,I don't own a pair of "kit gloves".Keep reading,and I'll keep writing.
Today's entry is a film I consider one of the most important flesh-eating zombie movies ever made,surely the first color feature to encorporate gut-chewing ghouls,and a must see/must own for anybody interested in such putrefying silver screen subject matter.Spanish director Jorge Grau crafts a wholly atmospheric and creepy tale,with an ecological slant(like so many movies in the early to mid-seventies),that certainly gave rise to moviegoers' wanton sleepless nights after viewing.With Italian gore specialist Gianetto(Zombi 2 et al) De Rossi on board to serve up the splatter,and a solid cast doing a fun job with their respective roles,it's extremely difficult not to love today's flick.Tweaking George A.'s zombie mythos ever so slightly,and doing so in blood-drenched color,Grau's Spanish/Italian co-production stands as one of the best zombie movies of all-time on most lists compiled by anyone who knows their prick from pumpkin butter about horror movies.

He only has eyes for grue.
George(Ray Lovelock)closes his curio shop in the city for the weekend,riding his motorcycle out to the countryside,interrupted while stopped for gas by Edna(Cristina Galbo'),who manages to back her car over his bike at the gas station.With his wheels out of commission,he hitches a ride with the typical woman driver,who's on her way to see her fix-starved needlehead sister Katie(Jeannine Mestre)and her husband Marin(Ruiz Lifante),to discuss dumping the hopeless bitch in a facility.Where would we be without siblings,huh.Unbeknownst to our unlikely duo,a new method of pest control using soundwaves to influence the nervous system of lesser life forms,turning them aggressive towards each other is being tested on the local farmlands.Little do our would-be scientists realize,their waves affect more than pesky bugs,and soon,the unburied dead within the wave range are coming back to life,with shitty attitudes and a penchant for the flesh of the living.Edna bears witness to the first instance of these ghouls in the form of drowned hobo Guthrie(great name!),who fancies terrorizing the girl while George asks local farmers for directions.Guthrie shambles upon Marin while he's shooting some night photographs,and his wife is trying to sneak out to the shed for a good shot in the arm,and kills the man as the auto-flash captures the whole gruesome event.
The inspector(Arthur Kennedy) appears on the case,and between voicing his disdain for George,Edna,and Katie,who's now in the midst of a nervous breakdown("You're all the same, the lot of you with your long hair and faggot clothes."), he questions them all as potential murder suspects,believing there's some whacked out drug cult responsible.Aren't the police just the most reasonable gents in the movies?

Insert joke about Italians eating with their hands here.
George and Edna try to heist the film from Marin's camera to prove her sister's innocence,but none of the shots prove to contain the water-drenched bum-zombie.After seeing violent babies attacking nurses at the hospital,it all becomes clear to George,who drives to the cemetery to see whether Guthrie still rests in peace or not.The couple find themselves trapped in a tomb surrounded by zombies,and when a cop who's been following them can corroborate their wild story,he's abruptly eaten by zombies.George smashes the apparatus out in the field to try and stop the dead ressurection,but fails to realize it isn't the only one of its kind,and before you can say In nomine Patris et fillii et Spiritus Sancti,the walking dead are on a gut-yanking killing spree at the hospital where Edna and her sister have rooms.Nurses get their tits squeezed off,Katie gets the piss strangled out of her by her dead husband,and a doctor takes an axe to the head,among the mounting casualties.George gets there too late,and is forced to burn all the zombies,Edna included,into a pile of ash.The inspector,arriving even later than George,shoots him in the head for his troubles,believing that he caused all the carnage at the hospital himself.When the policeman is later dropped off at the inn where the couple was staying,he's surprised to see George's zombie waiting for him,causing the stubborn fascist cop to eat corpse masticating death in the shadows.Out in the fields,they've repaired the soundwave machine,and increased the range of effectiveness....

After hearing about renewed global interest in his band,Townsend defiantly busted out of rehab.
Spanish-born Galbo' retired from acting in the eighties,and tours the world while instructing Flamenco out of California.Lovelock took part in genre films like La Settima Donna,Roma violenta,and Macchie solari before becoming a staple of Italian televison series.De Rossi worked most recently on the makeup for Christopher Roth(2010),after doing a lot of television,himself.Manchester Morgue,which has sixteen alternate titles to date(!!!), has been Grau's last genre film,though he continued to direct well into the nineties.The English graveyard in the film is believed to hold the body of Little John,of Robin Hood fame,surprisingly.Anyway,if you haven't seen this movie,where the fuck have you been?Get out there and score a copy.Anchor Bay released a beautiful collectible tin presentation of the film,with a slew of nifty extras,several years back,but it isn't impossible to find by any means.One of my favorite zombie movies,and an excellent horror classic for the ages,Morgue slowly rises from the slab with the highest scale rating of Four Wops.

"I choke-ah you throat-ah!I choke-ah you throat-ah!"