"L'alcova" (1984) d/ Joe D'Amato

We'll take a torrid turn towards the sexy tonight as we examine one of Papa Joe's sultry softcore Brass-esque period pieces from the mid-eighties, starring the source of my every Matool joke, Al Cliver, as well as the brunette bombshell from Avere vent'anni aka/ To Be Twenty(1978) and former Miss Italy 1975, Lilli Carati, D'Amato fave, the Black Emanuelle herself, Laura Gemser, and last, but never least, the angelic apple of my exploitative eye, Annie Belle, who'd not only outgrown the Lolita roles that comprised much of her early acting career by this point, but also the trademark bleached pixie hairdo in favor of lengthier brunette tresses. Naturally, you won't hear any complaints outta this guy.


"But I didn't want a slave, I wanted cornetti di crema!!"
Elio(Al Cliver) is a victorious soldier returning from an Abyssinian conquest to his Italian villa, bearing gifts for his lovely young wife Alessandra (Carati), who's been carrying on with his secretary Wilma (Belle) while he's been out expanding the empire for his Duce, who was political bedfellows with a fuehrer of his own, ahhh, you all know how that story goes by now... He surprises his spouse with a princess-turned-slave named Zerbal (Gemser), a gift from an African king, gracious for not having been snuffed out by the then-advancing fascist war machine. Alessandra initially hates the dusky gift ( Zerbal greets her with "Hello.Go and get yourself fucked." ),  at least until she's given the lanky woman in a kooky saliva-heavy ceremony, after which she's wrapped around Zerbal's impossibly long fingers, in more ways than one, as you had to know was coming.


"...now this is a very cool place to hit...", exclaims Elio (Al Cliver).
Perhaps incensed at not being able to give Elio his usual post boot removal blow job, Zerbal defiantly switches radio stations, breaks windows, and climbs trees barefoot ("Treat her like a pet, not a slave!" Elio scolds) until she finally turns her new mistress' racial slurs into 'ooh's and 'aah's, leaving a jealous Wilma as the odd lesbian out in the mix. Meanwhile, the jilted pantiless secretary and self-proclaimed 23 year old virgin teases and resists the advances of  his son Furio (Roberto Caruso), a fellow soldier and young guest, when she isn't wanking Elio off in the hallway as they both eavesdrop Zerbal and Alessandra in the bedroom. After a coke and champagne-fueled sass-off between the mistress and secretary, Elio returns with the equipment with which to make moving pictures, showing his three ladies what has to be the most vintage hardcore stag loop I've ever seen, and exclaiming, "We can do better than that!". Having gone belly up financially, he films his wife dressed as a nun, forcing her privates into the face of a bound up Wilma, before letting his filthy gardener Pepe rape her, on camera. Reunited with Furio, Wilma interrupts Zerbal getting a ceremonial slave lickdown from Elio, chucking the stolen stag film she'd made into a candle below, igniting the Abyssinian's gown, and bringing us to a fiery, vengeful climax.


My stone's gone from flint to jade over Wilma (Annie Belle).
The production values are top notch, and D'Amato has decorated the lush Italian countryside with appropriately beautiful people, none of which were strangers to softcore(only Carati made the jump to hardcore features), to play out his perverted power play here, and the performances aren't entirely flat as one might expect, given the prolific director's track record. I'd have given it three Wops if it didn't overextend itself towards the middle, but a solid double seems fitting for a movie whose plot mirrors the director's own life with a knowing smirk, having had to "resort" to pornography due to "economic" reasons, himself.


Amazing how she maintains eye contact with those obstructions in plain view. I know I couldn't do it.

"La morte ha sorriso all'assassino" (1973) d/ Aristide Massaccesi

Let's kick it off properly with what is arguably Italian sleazemeister Joe D'Amato's best genre work, in a Poe-inspired gothic 1973  giallo that stars Euro staple-creep Klaus Kinski and Swede-born confectionery item, Ewa "Candy" Aulin. Insert: lip smack here. In fact, those only familiar with the director's later, more crass efforts might be pleasantly surprised at the attention he dedicates to the film's dreamy look, a juxtaposition of horrible images against beautiful ones that I'm unsure he was ever able to purvey to an audience as effectively as he does here. As far as I know (a range that encompasses "just about everything" to "next to nothing" on any given day), it stands as the only other film in his two hundred (besides 1977's Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals), in which he uses his real name on a directorial credit, from a period when he clearly cared more about the artistic aspects of his movies than the financial success, as was visibly the case later in his career. Some might even go so far as to call it his "masterpiece"... Don't get the wrong idea, folks, this is still a D'Amato movie, and there's plenty of gory splatter and  nudity abound here, and you might have difficulty tracking the incoherent plot line even with the help of microchip implants, but such is the cinema, no?


More style and profile here than a Ric Flair wrasslin' promo. Woooo!
At the turn of the twentieth century, after a handsome doctor (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) impregnates the female half of an incestuous pair of siblings, resulting in the death of mother and child, her jilted, hunchbacked brother Franz (Luciano Rossi) sets out to restore her life. Three years later, on the doorstep of the estate of Walter Von Ravensbruck (Sergio Doria), son of the aforementioned doctor, a gruesome carriage accident finds beautiful passenger, Greta (Aulin) injured and the carriage driver skewered through the heart on the vehicle shaft.Walter calls in Dr. Sturges (Kinski) first to examine the driver's corpse for the authorities, then to diagnose the young, unresponsive woman. Sturges unflinchingly sinks a needle clear into her wide-open eye(!), then recognizes an inscription on the amulet around her neck as just the Incan formula for resurrection he's been looking for, for years! He scurries down to his sub-basement lab and laboriously fiddles with beakers and test tubes, before getting C.T.F.O.ed by mysterious hands just as his latest concoction brings a male corpse back to life. Thorough as a shadowy killer usually is, he re-snuffs Sturges' mute assistant and the reanimated corpse, for good measure. Upstairs, both Von Ravensbruck and his wife are mesmerized by their lovely new guest and play nudie prod games together while a maid that's haunted by visions of Franz gets her facepiece blown the eff off by the shadowy killer, who proves he's not against using a gun once in a while.


"Hold ztill. I'm goink to inzert zis pin into your eyeball..."
Walter's wife Eva (Angela Bo) walls up Greta in the musty cellar, after failing to drown her while giving her a bath, but ultimately fails in stopping the inevitable spectral haunting/ violent death in store for both she and her husband. The Von Ravensbruck's trusty manservant, Semian, reveals himself to be Greta's murderous accomplice, but she inexplicably rewards his loyalty by sending him off to join the choir invisible. After her objet du vengeance, Walter's father, is trapped in his daughter-in-law's crypt as her eyes ominously snap open, we flashback to Greta's resurrection at Franz's hands three years earlier, his success garnering him a nasty end from an ornery black feline that has issues with eyes. The grisly aftermath is discovered by a police inspector, who rehashes the strange details of the case to his elderly, invalid wife, who's been turned away from him in her wheelchair the whole time. When she turns to face him, he realizes that she is in reality, Greta, a harbinger of his own horrible fate, perhaps? Roll credits.


"...and the big dance is tonight! I'm ruined!!!"
What manner of insanity is this? A D'Amato movie that's not hardcore porn, and it merits a Wop, doubled, on the mostly infallible and oft-imitated ratings scale?? Believe it or not, despite his under-use of Kinski here, the convoluted story line, and some signature jerky handheld P.O.V. shots that he'd revisit again and again, in things like Porno Holocaust(1979) and Antropophagus(1980),  this just might be my favorite of all of the director's genre work, with mostly solid performances from the cast, palatable cinematography, and an aptly phantasmagorical score from Berto Pisano. D'Amato would follow this one up with several over the next few years under the name Michael Wotruba, including 1974's Eroi all'inferno, a war movie that also starred Rossi and Kinski. The adorable Aulin would next appear in Jorge Grau's Ceremonia Sangrienta (1973).


"Ho bisogno di aiuto! I've got a sheep's eye glued to my face!"

Anthropophagous(1980)d/Joe D'Amato

Aristede Massaccesi,Joe D'Amato,Fédérico Slonisco,Romano Gastaldi,he certainly had more aliases than one of the Manson girls.Whatever you choose to call the guy,he was obviously a director with an interesting body of work.Up until his death in 1999,D'Amato(what we'll call him here for now)helmed gialli,westerns,horror,porn,horror-porn,action,period pieces,really everything under the sun.In my opinion,he was at his best shooting pornography,but his small portfolio of horror films has generated an avid base of loyal fans worldwide,with this particular entry among most fan favorites.The Italian busta poster adorned my dining room wall for the past seven years,much to the chagrin of my ex-wife and later,to the delight of my ex-girlfriend!I gotta admit,there is something endearing about this movie,even if I still may not be able to put my finger on it after all these years.

You'd think those giant headphones might have deflected the chop...
A young couple is enjoying an afternoon at the beach with their mutt,the girl going for a swim while the guy lays back in the sand and rocks out to some disco broadcast over headphones slightly smaller than Terex Titan tires.Ironically he's too busy grooving to see her get pulled under,or hear her screams,OR see whatever is lumbering out of the frothy surf,dripping his girlfriend's blood.He gets a meat cleaver slightly smaller than a sheet of wood paneling planted in his skull.Meanwhile,a group of friends vacationing in Greece embarks on a boat tour of the islands for some much needed rest and relaxation.A nice enough oddball named Julie(Zora Kerova)hitches a ride with the two couples,as she plans to meet up with a pair of friends on one of the Aegeans herself.During the trip,she breaks out some tarot cards and gives readings for her new friends,but when the cards foretell doom for everyone aboard,she throws them overboard into the Mediterranean.When they dock for the night on one of the islands,they find the town mysteriously deserted,with no clues as to why,save for a woman who disappears into the shadows.Back on the boat,pregnant Maggie(Serena Grandi)who's twisted her ankle and stayed behind,is abducted by an unsavoury,unseen character who likes breathing heavily.

Sprain your ankle? Soak it three times a day in a bucket full of seawater.The phony-looking latex head is an optional bonus.
As the group investigates the abandoned buildings,they stumble across a bizzare journal that tells an awful tale of a hunger-crazed man who decided to start eating his family when food and contact from the mainland was cut off.They stumble into a hysterical blind girl,who's been hiding in a wine cask with a butcher knife for protection,who warns them that the grim reaper(Luigi Montefiori),the same oatmeal-faced cannibal from the journal, has murdered the entire population of the town and eaten them.Though blind,she has managed to stay alive all this time thanks to her keen sense of smell,knowing whenever this fiend approaches.Soon fate rings a ghoulish dinner bell,and one by one,the group is stalked,chopped,hacked,and munched by this madman until the mindblowing climax,which you'll have to see for yourself,if you have the stomach for it!

What's for dinner tonight,Luigi? Liver and mushed wombs?
Media Blasters did an admirable job in rereleasing this one in a two disc set,restoring two notorious previously cut sequences that I'll refrain from describing(hint:I've alluded to them in the screenshots,and even for a director noted for outrageousness,they're pretty friggin' outrageous!),and a whole slew of extras that any self-respecting horror buff will devour like so many baked lobstertails smothered in melted butter,kind of like your humble N dined on tonight at his father's place.Unfortunately allergic to shellfish,despite a lifelong affinity for such feasts,the violent reaction I tried to avoid by dummying up with Benadryl beforehand caught up with me,ending my Christmas Eve festivities prematurely,and nearly turning my toes up!Hope yours was more pleasant than mine,regardless.D'Amato followed this shocker up with Absurd in 1987,not technically a sequel,though Eastman/Montefiori insists that it is just that.Whatever the case may be,this entry is not bogged down by its shortcomings(the film score,one or two of the gore pieces)and is a true cult classic that must be seen to be believed.Don't let the average Wopsploitation score fool you.Get your hands on it!

Ever famished,the grim reaper(Luigi Montefiori)namnams his own gutty-wuts.