"La notte dei diavoli" (1971) d/ Giorgio Ferroni

Tonight's review is based on a story by Tolstoy called "Lu Famille Du Wurdulak" that was last adapted for the silver screen by Mario Bava, and unforgettably so, in his I tre volti di paura aka/ Black Sabbath (1965). The 1971 Italo-Spanish co-production directed by Perugia native, Giorgio Ferroni, the guy who gave you things like Mill of the Stone Women (1960) and Per pochi dollari ancora aka/ For a Few Extra Dollars (1968), features some disturbing and impressive gore for the era from FX wizard Carlo Rambaldi, and stars familiar genre favorites Gianni Garko and Agostina Belli. The resulting, infrequently seen film is no less a cult classic than Bava's earlier work, perhaps a more modern-flavored, funereal update on said effort, albeit a gradually paced one, with it's fair share of violence and nudity.


Bet you won't see any dynamic exploding prop headery in Dracula Untold. Just sayin'.
After he's found stumbling aimlessly on the beach, a contused Nicola (Gianni Garko) struggles to cling to sanity, as he tries to piece together the weird events that have left him in this hospital bed, when a strange woman's appearance sends him into a panicked frenzy of violent hallucinations. A wrong turn sends the lumber dealer's automobile crashing in the darkest depths of the Yugoslavian forests, leading him through a mostly abandoned town to the homestead of Gorca (Bill Vanders), a superstitious peasant whose sourpuss family lives in the terrible shadow of a malevolent witch (Maria Monti), who's the reason for the family's insistence that he stay indoors after the sun has set, and the source behind the strange noises that disturb Nicola's rest that evening. He weathers the wild tales for the striking beauty of Gorca's blue eyed daughter, Sdenka (Agostina Belli), who happens to be a dead ringer for the woman who visits him at the outset in the hospital. The plot thickens...


Working on Duck, You Sucker! with Sergio Leone sure took its toll on James Coburn.
The following day, Gorca sets out to rid the family of the spell caster's evil influence, with a sizable wooden stake in hand, and on the guarantee that his loved ones not unlock the door for him should he return even moments past six o'clock, betokening the desperate man's failure. His volatile son, Jovan (Roberto Maldera), tries to fix Nicola's car, after having helped bury his uncle the previous day, in hopes of ending the witch's ongoing malediction towards his family. Nicola is then forced to weigh his increasing feelings towards Sdenka against the grotesque goings on around him, as Jovan jockeys for familial power amidst growing evidence of Wurdulak activity. Unlike their vampiric kin, these variants prey solely upon the blood of loved ones, and can be dispatched in a myriad of gruesome, more conventional methods besides just the obligatory stake through the heart, running water, burning rays of sunlight, etc. we've come to expect from bloodsuckers. As you'd expect, this leads to a satisfyingly goopy, twist of a finale, where Nicola frantically searches the hospital for his female visitor as the events leading up to this unfold through flashback. If any of this sounds promising to you, you'll have to seek out a copy, to see how it all wraps up, for yourselves.


When everyone else is sick of seeing your rotten face, the maggots still love you.
Garko also turned up in things like Castellari's Gli occhi freddi della paura aka/ Cold Eyes of Fear (1971),  Il venditore di morte (1971), Il fiore dai petali d'acciaio (1973) and Fulci's Sette note in nero (1977), when he wasn't appearing in westerns like Se incontri Sartana prega per la tua morte (1968) and 10,000 dollari per un massacro (1967). Belli appeared in Il castello dalle porte di fuoco aka/ Scream of the Demon Lover (1970), Giornata nera per l'ariete aka/ The Fifth Cord (1971), and Bluebeard (1972), as well as several sex comedies later on in the decade. You can pick up tonight's review on a reasonably priced Blu-ray from the fine folks at Raro, and should do so, by all means. On the scale, a four Wop rating is reserved for but apex examples of genre fare, and Ferroni's film certainly falls into that category; recommended viewing as we draw nearer to All Hallow's Eve...


Ho potuto guardare una faccia come questa tutta la notte...

"Shark:Rosso nell'oceano"(1984)d/Lamberto Bava

There's really no mistaking the difference between a film by maestro Mario Bava and one directed by his son, Lamberto.I think you know where I'm going here.Tonight we'll be looking at one of the latter(we'll never run out of movies to review here at the Wop, never, you hear me?!!), and not one of Lamberto's crowning cinematic achievements, either.Known alternately as "Monster Shark" and "Devil Fish", tonight's muddled-but-ambitious aqua-giallo, partially penned by Luigi Cozzi(and Dardano Sacchetti and Sergio Martino and Lamberto Bava and...), as evidenced by the inclusion of his obligatory 'Stella' character, predates the SyFy 'original', "Sharktopus", by twenty-six years, for those of you out there that happen to be keeping score on this sort of thing.In the end, though, it's just another Italian Jaws rip-off afterall, made more laughably rotten by a Velveeta-laden soundtrack as realized by Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis, a corrugated cardboard cutout creature created by Ovidio Taito, and a second unit director named Mattei(yeah, him).Still, you might be able to make it all the way through this one if, like me, boobs, blood, bad acting, and an extra hokey ratiocination are what you oftimes groove upon, as there are plenty of all of those to keep it entertaining throughout.

"Arggggh! That thing is making off with my new Bruno Magli's!!!"
A couple enjoying a leisurely cruise(in a toy boat launched in an aquarium in certain establishing shots, mind you) at sunset is interrupted by the rubbery suction cups of a tentacle arm that vigorously smashes their boat and kills them off-camera.Dr. Stella Dickens(Valentine Monnier) feeds dolphins and researches them scientifically, as evidenced by her clipboard and pencil she's carrying around.Uhhh, "do tricks for fish", check.At the same time, the Coast Guard helicopter has spotted the pre-credit boat wreck, sending screeching rescue divers to rummage for survivors.Meanwhile, Dr. Hogan(Lawrence Morgant), a marine biologist who never met a pop top can of beer he didn't like, is picking up strange sounds from a sonar buoy he's towing behind the "Seaquarium", his not-so-cleverly-named research ship.The divers pull a legless corpse from the murky water via rescue harness, as Hogan's boat is suddenly attacked, with Dickens' dolphins schitzing out at the exact same moment.The autopsy of ol' legless proves inconclusive, as the sheriff(Gianni Garko) tells his 'roid-ripped deputy to photograph the body.Hogan later tells Dickens that the sound he captured on his equipment during the boat attack resembled a voice, and then, a "terrifying sound filled with hate"(he must've recorded the sound of my first stretch of the morning).Enter Peter(Michael Sopkiw), the resident electrician who's about to vacation in New York with "three beautiful women"(Electricians get all the pussy) when Stella pulls up on her motorcycle and flirtingly begs him to build a Santa's Naughty or Nice-sized list of electronic equipment instead, to the chagrin of his sensual mulatto/terrone-esque assistant/lover, Sandra, who's watching in the wings.Wow, a lot of shit's going down in this one, too bad, none of it is any good...

Washed up on the beach...sorta like Pamela Anderson these days.
Let the makin' out commence(cue:Mad Magazine flexi-disc, you know you've still got yours...).At West Ocean International, named after Professor West(William Berger), of course, Dr. Davis indiscreetly makes out with West's wife Sonja while elsewhere, Peter goes the tonguey route with Sandra, only to get roughed up by some henchmen who smash the hi-tech equipment he'd been burning the midnight oils to finish for Stella."They smashed the converter...You work all night and they smash it to bits!", he says.Meanwhile, a scuba diver who's just been harrassed by stock footage of various different shark species gets chewed up but good in the prehistoric yap of our titular monster shark, while a W.O.I. lab assistant has also mysteriously turned her toes up.The sheriff decides that its a murder alright, investigation notwithstanding.Another body is discovered on the pier, and some highly detailed plaster casts are made from the bite wounds that reveal one mutha of a toofus.Peter, Stella, Bob, his beer cans, and Sandra set off on a sonar-heavy boat to search for the monster, and after Bob chucks his empty into the ocean(kind of odd behaviour for a marine biologist, eh?)and the creature plays chicken with the bottom of the ship, appearing as a glorious eight-bit graphic on Peter's scope, Bob throws more cans into the water, and the crew celebrates capturing the monster's noises on their equipment.The lone survivor to this point flatlines at the hospital, causing the doctor to defibrillate him eleven times in rapid succession before stating that "fear" killed him(yeah, that or the 165 thousand volts you just sent through him...).Cutting through a bible's worth of banal dialogue and sub-plots that go nowhere fast, the creature is, to quote Dr. Davis, "A marine monster, almost indestructible*. And whose genetic characteristics are as fearsome as the white shark's. A gigantic octopus with the intelligence of a dolphin, and as monstrous as a prehistoric creature." *(unless there's an electrician with flame throwers around)

"Now that you're all gathered around, and I've delivered my last words, I can die dramatically."
Bava, who's credited as "John Old, Jr." here, followed this uncomprehensible garbage up with the ever-popular cult classic Demoni(1985), then Midnight Killer, and Demoni 2 the following year.Sopkiw was a mid-eighties staple in Italian genre films, appearing in Sergio Martino's 2019 - Dopo la caduta di New York(1983), Bava's Blastfighter(1984), Nudo e selvaggio(Massacre in Dinosaur Valley)(1985), and of course, this mutt.Berger, who worked with Bava's father on 5 bambole per la luna d'agosto(1970), enjoyed a long career in genre films, appearing in everything from Sabata(1969) and Keoma(1976) to Franco's Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun(1977) and Porco Mondo(1978), before passing away in 1993.I shouldn't have to say too much more about this one, you know what you're in for, and whether or not you're going to enjoy it at all.Technically speaking, on the scale, it's a One Wopper, all the way.

Let's hear you say "mutated proto-dunkleosteus tentacles" five times fast.