Killer Fish (1979)

Antonio Margheriti’s 1979 opus Killer Fish has a 4.2 rating on IMDb and is contemptuously dismissed by people who take movies seriously so I figured I’d almost certainly love this movie. And I was right.

And it has a cast guaranteed to bring joy to the hearts of fans of 70s cult movies and TV.

It should be pointed out that the title is just a little bit misleading. There are piranhas, lots of them, and they do the stuff you expect piranhas to do, but they’re not the main focus. This is not a Jaws rip-off. It bears not the slightest resemblance to Jaws (or to the movie Piranha). This is a totally different type of movie. This is a frenetic action movie and it’s a heist movie.

We start with a fine heist sequence. Margheriti loved miniatures effects and he knew how to make them work. He was a guy who was just not going to include miniatures work unless it was done right. Yes, you can tell that he’s using miniatures, just as you can tell when directors of a later era use CGI. But somehow good miniatures work just looks better than CGI. It doesn’t have that cartoonish CGI look. This particular sequence involves lots of explosions. Margheriti liked to blow stuff up. I personally think that this is a very positive thing.

At first we don’t know it’s a heist. We get a brief scene of a smoother operator doing some big-time gambling at a casino, then we cut to a man and a woman breaking into some kind of industrial plant (possibly a power plant) deep in the Amazon rainforest. These people could be secret agents or thieves.

We soon find out that they’re thieves. The objective is not sabotage (they blow up a whole pile of stuff merely as a diversion). Their objective is the safe in the main office. It would appear that either the owners of the plant have been doing some shady financial stuff or possibly they just don’t trust the government but they keep their financial reserves in that safe. In the form of precious stones. Emeralds.

The smooth operator is Paul Diller (James Franciscus) and he’s the mastermind. He has a hobby. Tropical fish. Carnivorous tropical fish. He has a tank full of piranhas. At first it just seems like an odd hobby. The duo who made the break-in are Paul’s girlfriend Kate (Karen Black) and Lasky (Lee Majors). We get the feeling that there could be a bit of a romantic triangle here. This suggests the possibility of a double-cross. In fact there will be lots of double-crosses. The first attempt is made by the two guys who are the gang’s hired muscle. The emeralds are hidden in a lake. These two guys think that grabbing the emeralds for themselves will be easy. Big mistake.

The heist story intersects with a separate plot strand involving a fashion photo shoot in the rainforest. The organiser is the glamorous Ann Hoyt (Marisa Berenson). The star model is Gabrielle (Margaux Hemingway). The thieves are lying low in a luxury hotel and they get to meet the fashion photo people and it’s instantly obvious that Gabrielle and Lasky are hot for each other. That will lead to big trouble.

The plot then gets complicated when the hurricane strikes. And what about those piranhas? Don’t worry, they get plenty to do (and plenty to eat).

So this is a hurricane disaster movie, a killer fish movie and a heist movie. Bringing that all together might seem like a challenge but Margheriti pulls it off with style.

The action scenes are excellent. I’ve already mentioned the excellent miniatures work. We do see the piranhas but mostly we see the results of their activities. And we get scenes of spectacular destruction during the hurricane.

James Franciscus is very good - smooth but with a hint of obsessiveness bordering on madness. Franciscus handles this with admirable subtlety.

Lee Majors isn’t called on to do any fancy acting. All he has to do is project a brooding intensity and a sense of being a dangerous bad boy. He does this effortlessly.

And then there are the women. Three very glamorous women played by three glamorous actresses. Marisa Berenson’s job is to be classy and stylish, which she handles with no problems. Karen Black as Kate shares top billing with Lee Majors and she’s in terrific form. Kate is sexy and dangerous, possibly treacherous and she’s a passionate woman. She’s a bad girl but we like her a lot. She has spirit.

Margaux Hemingway was not a great actress but she’s playing a fashion model and Miss Hemingway was a fashion model. Gabrielle is beautiful, blonde and dumb but maybe not so dumb. A girl doesn’t survive long in the cut-throat world of the super-model without learning a few survival skills. Maybe Gabrielle shouldn’t be under-estimated. This was a role that was just within Margaux Hemingway’s limited acting range but she’s adequate and she looks super-glamorous.

There’s no nudity or sex (although Margaux Hemingway does share a shower with Lee Majors). Considering the presence of thousands of piranhas the gore is very very restrained. The intention was obviously to avoid a US R rating at all costs.

The pacing is excellent (Margheriti always knew how to pace a movie). The plot has the necessary nasty little twists. You get a fine heist story plus a large-scale disaster plus piranhas. This is what cinema is all about! Killer Fish is hugely entertaining. Highly recommended.

I have the Spanish Blu-Ray and it looks great. It includes the English-Language version with removable Spanish subtitles.

The Mind of Mr Soames (1970)

The Mind of Mr Soames is a 1970 Amicus production and it’s not at all what you might expect from that company. This is not an anthology film. It’s not gothic horror. It’s debatable whether it even qualifies as a genre film. You could call it a science fiction movie in the sense that it deals with science but it has a contemporary setting with no futuristic technology, expect perhaps for a tiny bit of speculation about surgical techniques.

It also deals with behavioural therapy of a kind which gives it a very tenuous link to A Clockwork Orange which came out in the following year. It’s certainly part of a whole range of movies starting in the late 50s which deal with the ramification of new psychological approaches which were gaining ground at the expense of increasingly discredited Freudian theories.

In fact a brief look at the plot synopsis might lead one to expect a kind of psycho killer movie but it isn’t that either.

It’s also untypical of Amicus’s output in being very low-key and rather cerebral. It’s even at times close to being an art movie.

His might account for the film’s descent into obscurity. It would have been tricky to market and movies that are tricky to market do tend to do poorly at the box office. It hasn’t gained a major cult following, again most likely because it’s so difficult to categorise.

And it has an intriguing cast.

Eminent American neurosurgeon Dr Michael Bergen (Robert Vaughn) arrives at the Midlands Neurophysiological Institute to perform experimental surgery on a 30-year-old man named John Soames (Terence Stamp). Soames has been in a coma since birth. Dr Bergen hopes to awaken him. If the operation succeeds Soames will of course be like a new-born baby. He will have to be taught to walk, to talk, to feed himself.

That’s the task of psychologist Dr Maitland (Nigel Davenport) - to put Soames through a crash course that will take him from babyhood to adulthood in a few months.

Of course the crash course runs into problems. Dr Maitland’s training regime is inflexible and rigorous. Dr Bergen on the other hand realises that Soames really is a child. He needs to play.

Soames eventually escapes and gets into a good deal of trouble through his total lack of understanding of the adult world. It seems that his escape could end disastrously or possibly even tragically, for Soames himself or for others. You think you know how it’s all going to end but this is neither a horror film nor a thriller so it’s wise not to assume that it will follow a typical horror movie or thriller trajectory.

What I like most about this movie is the number of times it sets up situations which the viewer will be sure can only play out in one way but the movie refuses to conform to our expectations. It’s just not the movie that you have probably assumed it’s going to be.

The film does explore issues about child-rearing and these may perhaps be intended as a commentary on wider social issues - individual freedom of expression opposed to social responsibility.

Dr Maitland is a believer in the need for discipline. Dr Bergen believes in freedom. These were issues that were in the air in 1970 (and again there’s that faint but tantalising similarity to A Clockwork Orange).

I’ve always had mixed feelings about Terence Stamp. I find him very mannered and I dislike most of his performances but if you cast him in a weird offbeat part he would give you a weird offbeat performance and on occasions that worked brilliantly. He’s perfect in William Wyler’s The Collector and in the Fellini-directed Toby Dammit segment of Spirits of the Dead. Stamp’s performance here works and I doubt if any other actor could have bettered it.

Nigel Davenport is good in the tricky part of Dr Maitland. It’s tricky because Maitland is a very unsympathetic character - he’s stubborn, he’s blinkered, he cannot admit to being wrong and he has no understanding of people. But he’s not a villain. He has no actual desire to hurt Soames. In his own way he means well.

Robert Vaughn is excellent as Dr Bergen. Vaughn of course had immense charm but this is not quite the debonair playboy charm of Napoleon Solo. Dr Bergen’s charm comes from a genuine human warmth. Vaughn makes Dr Bergen self-assured without being arrogant. He may not always be right but he means well.

There are no villains at all in this movie, just people who sincerely disagree on fundamental issues. We don’t really want anything bad to happen to any of these people.The film gets its points across without the audience ever feeling that it’s being lectured. The ending is typical of the entire approach of the film - set the audience up to expect one thing and then give them something else which is less obvious and more satisfying.

This film was based on a novel by Charles Eric Maine, a science fiction writer with no great reputation but I rather enjoyed his novel Spaceways.

The Mind of Mr Soames is offbeat and fascinating. Highly recommended. It’s on Blu-Ray, from Powerhouse Indicator.

Jungle Warriors (1984)

Jungle Warriors is included in a women-in-prison boxed set but it’s not quite a women-in-prison movie although it has affinities with that delightfully scuzzy genre. 

The presence of John Vernon, Alex Cord and Sybil Danning in the cast makes this one sound promising.

Two groups of people are heading for an unnamed South American country. There’s Mafia kingpin Vito Mastranga (John Vernon) who, accompanied by his lawyer and nephew Nick Spilotro (Alex Cord), is there to organise a distribution deal with big-time local drug lord Cesar Santiago (Paul L. Smith).

The second group is a bunch of models heading for a jungle photo shoot.

There is no way these two groups should come in contact with each other, but they do.

The drug lord has his own private army and when the models’ Grumman amphibian flies a bit too close to their jungle headquarters they shoot it down. The models end up as prisoners of the drug lord and as you might expect they have a very unpleasant time. First he gives the girls to his psycho half-sister Angel (Sybil Danning) to play with. She likes playing cruel games with girls. When Angel grows tired of the games she gives the girls to Santiago’s foot soldiers. You can imagine what happens to the girls then.

Santiago thinks Mastranga plans to double-cross him. Mastranga thinks Santiago plans to double-cross him. When the girls get loose and start shooting up bad guys both men think their suspicions have been confirmed. What follows is an epic running battle between these three armed factions. Much blood is shed.

While this is happening US Federal agents are busy trying to locate the drug lord’s jungle lair. The Feds have an agent on the inside but that agent’s cover gets blown.

One thing I learnt from this movie - in the 80s all fashion models had extensive combat training and could handle automatic weapons with ease.

There’s as much violent action as you could ask for.

Surprisingly this film is relatively tame when it comes to sleaze. There is some but nowhere near as much as you would expect. The movie did run into censorship problems and was heavily cut so the original version was probably sleazier.

John Vernon is of course great fun, as are Alex Cord and Paul L. Smith. There is an abundance of overacting. Sybil Danning does the psycho bitch thing very well.

The supporting players vary in quality but they all overact and that’s what matters.

The low budget is evident and technically it’s just a tad slipshod at times.

The pacing however is taut and the action scenes have a lot of energy.

I believe this film was shot in Mexico. The locations are pretty impressive.

The theme song is sung by Marina Arcangeli and it’s stupendously awful.

Jungle Warriors isn’t great but it’s reasonably enjoyable. Worth a look if you’re going to buy the boxed set.

The Panik House DVD looks a bit rough around the edges and this does seem to be a slightly cut version. There are no extras. A restored uncut version on Blu-Ray would be nice and while it seems unlikely stranger things have happened.

The women-in-prison DVD set also includes Chained Heat and Red Heat (both with Linda Blair). Jungle Warriors is certainly the weakest of the three movies.

The Ark of the Sun God (1984)

The Ark of the Sun God is a 1984 Italian-Spanish-Turkish Indiana Jones rip-off but it’s directed by Antonio Margheriti so you expect that it will be a very good very entertaining Indiana Jones rip-off. And it is.

This is very much a feelgood movie. It’s family entertainment in the best sense of the term. There’s no gore, no graphic violence, no nudity and no sex. But there is an abundance of fun and style.


It begins with a burglary but the burglar, Rick Spear (David Warbeck), has been set up. It was a test. It was a way for his old buddy, English aristocrat Lord Dean (John Steiner) to manipulate Rick into agreeing to carry out a much more challenging burglary. He has to open a door. It is the door to the tomb of Gilgamesh. The objective is to steal a jewelled sceptre, thousands of years old and of immense mystical and symbolic importance. It is reputed to have magical powers. It is potentially the key to vast political power. Lord Dean wants the staff, but Lord Dean is not the bad guy. Or at least he claims to be the good guy.

There are others who want that sceptre. They are the bad guys, although perhaps from their point of view they’re the good guys.

Both groups want to have a lever that will force Rick to join their side. The obvious lever is his cute American girlfriend Carol (Susie Sudlow). Rick is crazy about Carol. If she were to be kidnapped Rick would agree to anything.

Lord Dean is a kind of freelancer who seems to be working on behalf of the British and American governments with the aim of keeping the sceptre out of the hands of those who might use it in a way that would damage British and American interests. This is a story that could easily have been developed in a more cynical direction, with perhaps a suggestion that the good guys are no more moral than the bad guys, but Margheriti clearly did not want to go down that path.

On the other hand Lord Dean does kidnap Carol, ostensibly so that the bad guys cannot kidnap her again. It’s also notable that Carol is not actually mistreated by either the good guys or the bad guys.

Rick has an ally, of sorts, in Mohammed (Ricardo Palacios). He’s a dealer in curios and artifacts and anything else that might prove profitable. He’s a nice guy but he’s unscrupulous where business is concerned. He’s the kind of guy who might well be tempted to double-cross his own mother.

He acquires another ally, a grizzled old adventurer named Beetle (Luciano Pigozzi). Beetle had been part of the expedition led by a German archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Gilgamesh decades earlier but was unable to open it. Beetle is a nice old guy but again we can’t be certain he will prove to be trustworthy. The viewer is left with just enough uncertainty about the motivations of key characters like Lord Dean, Mohammed and Beetle to keep things interesting.

There are some truly spectacular action sequences, naturally all done using the techniques of the pre-CGI era, and they look a whole lot better than most modern action scenes done with CGI. Margheriti had a real flair for action scenes and he had a very good crew.

There’s superb use of the Turkish locations especially the remote location of the tomb.

Margheriti clearly had a reasonable budget to work with but like most Italian genre directors of that era he could always make a movie look more expensive than it was. This is visually a very impressive movie.

David Warbeck makes a fine action hero. He’s a decent guy but he is a professional burglar so he’s not exactly honest and he has a definite tough edge. Warbeck has real charisma. Happily the English dub features Warbeck’s own voice. It also features John Steiner’s own voice and he’s great fun as Lord Dean, a guy who like Rick is a good guy with flexible ethics.

The whole cast is good.

The Ark of the Sun God is highly recommended.

The 88 Films Blu-Ray looks very nice and includes a decent audio commentary.

Genocyber (anime OVA, 1994)

Genocyber is a five-episode 1994 anime OVA directed by Kôichi Ôhata based on Tony Takezaki’s 1992 manga Genocyber: The Beauty Devil from Psychic World. The anime is a fine example of a good idea somewhat weakened by self-indulgent visual excess.

There’s a cyberpunk influence here, and a monster movie influence. Among other things it’s a mad scientist story.

This is a near-future world where attempts are being made, unsuccessful as usual, to eliminate war. As usual it seems that this peaceful utopia will be a global totalitarian state. National armies will be outlawed. There is a problem. Private corporations such as the Kuryu Corporation have more military power than most countries. And their ethical standards are much the same as those of governments - in other words they don’t have any ethical standards.

There are actually two mad scientists and they have been investigating the powers of the mind. There is within the human mind a mind shadow that can harness life energies and make them tangible, and potentially powerful in the physical world. The result is a kind of corporeal mind-creation, the Vajra.

Their research is centred on two sisters, Elaine and Diana. Whether they can be described as sisters or perhaps twins or whether they’re something else entirely is open to debate. They may be the daughters of one or other of the mad scientists.Diana has no functional body, only a cyberbody. Elaine has the mind of a child, or perhaps that of a wild animal.

Eventually two monstrous creations have come into being, the Vajranoid and Genocyber. This is the world of anime so it wouldn’t do to jump to conclusions about which is good and which evil.

As usual when people try to bring about world peace it leads to war. A US supercarrier is involved. By chance Elaine is aboard the carrier. She has been adopted by a kindly female doctor, Myra. There’s another mad scientist and he has harnessed the Vajra to create the Vajranoid, a superweapon which is both cybernetic and biological and maybe something else. A lot of mayhem ensues. Cities get destroyed.

There’s an enormous amount of blood and gore. There’s so much that it quickly ceases to have any impact. Seeing a head explode might shock the first time but seeing a head explode for the 143rd time becomes tiresome. This anime needed more creepiness and dread and less gore.

That’s the first three episodes. Then it changes gear completely for the final two episodes. We’re in future society, the last refuge of humanity. It’s a utopia and like all utopias it’s actually a totalitarian dystopia. There’s another pair of sisters. There’s a young man and a young blind woman making a living with a sideshow act. There’s a strange religious cult. The cult incorporates element of Christianity combined with loads of other millenarian stuff. The connection with the three earlier episodes is rather tenuous. These two episodes feature a lot less gore, they’re much more atmospheric, they’re much weirder and much more interesting.

There are some genuinely cool ideas here. The plot is never fully explained. In fact the plot is totally incoherent. This OVA is not a complete success but it does have lots of WTF moments which I enjoy. I do like all the weird disturbing never-quite-explained sister stuff. These are sisters with a psychic link but the link is more mystical and mysterious than that. There are also plenty of suggestions of weird things being destined to happen.

I don’t object to gore but it tends to bore me. Too often it’s used to cover up a lack of real imagination. That’s a pity here since there is some real imagination in Genocyber. There’s a stupendous quantity of action. There’s some nudity and a small amount of sex.

This is a product of an era in anime when boundaries were being pushed and in which a major selling point for violent anime was that it was seen as very much not kids’ stuff. That did lead to excess for the sake of excess and Genocyber is guilty of that at times. Genocyber is very very violent indeed.

Whatever its faults Genocyber is unpredictable and in its own way memorable, and entertaining in a bizarre way. Recommended.

If you enjoy the wild crazy sex and violence-fuelled excesses of late 80s/early 90s anime then Urotsukidoji: Legend of the Overfiend (1989) does it much better, as does the 1989-94 OVA Angel Cop.

Discotek’s Blu-Ray presentation is fine. The only worthwhile extra is a fairly informative essay.

Revenge of the Virgins (1959)

Revenge of the Virgins is a 1959 B-western but it’s no ordinary B-western. This is a wild crazy nudie B-western written by the legendary Ed Wood Jr. It was directed by Peter Perry Jr and he’s almost as interesting as Ed Wood.

Now Ed Wood Jr is notorious for topping so many lists of the worst film directors all time. I can actually think of a couple of worse directors than Wood but he would definitely make my All-Time Five Worst Directors list. On the other hand, as a screenwriter and novelist he was surprisingly interesting and entertaining. You’ll always get touches of Ed Wood craziness and weirdness but he was quite capable of taking a deliberately tongue-in-cheek approach and as a writer his craziness could be, in its own odd way, inspired.

I don’t think I will ever again be tempted to watch another movie that he directed but if I see his name listed in the credits as screenwriter of a movie then I will seek out that movie. I consider The Violent Years, a juvenile delinquent movie that he scripted, to be a must-see movie.

Peter Perry Jr directed a whole slew of nudie movies in the 60s and they’re all good-natured and offbeat and enjoyable. Perry understood how to make a nudie movie that offered more than just naked ladies.

Revenge of the Virgins deals with an Apache tribe trying to stop gold prospectors from moving into its territory. There are only a handful of tribe members left. Less than a dozen in fact. They are all young, female and incredibly hot. They all spend the entire movie topless. The leader of the tribe is a blonde babe. She was kidnapped and raised by the tribe.

Melvin Potter (Charles Veltmann Jr) and his wife Ruby (Jodean Lawrence) have just arrived in a small town out West and hope to buy the saloon. They need money.

Grizzled old prospector Pan Taggart (Stanton Pritchard) may be able to help them. He knows where there is an abundance of gold for the taking. They will need to hire some gunmen. The local Apaches are not friendly.

The expedition sets out. Five men and a woman, all armed. They don’t trust each other too much, with good reason.

And then suddenly an arrow comes from out of nowhere and the expedition is one man short. They know the Apaches are now stalking them although they don’t know that the Apaches are all gorgeous young babes. They may be gorgeous bare-breasted babes but they’re dead shots with a bow and they’re smart enough not to contemplate a frontal assault. Their plan is obviously to pick off the members of the expedition one by one.

This would be the time for the expedition members to present a united front but they’re still planing to double-cross each other. And those Apache gals just keep stalking and shooting and then scooting.

That’s it for the plot but it’s a perfectly serviceable plot for a B-western.

What makes the movie interesting is the tone. Right at the start we get a voiceover that tells us that it may be just a tall tale told by old prospectors around the campfire. Clearly we’re not supposed to take the movie too seriously. But it does not become an out-and-out spoof nor does it indulge in out-and-out goofiness. In fact it gets rather dark at times. This is a story of a party of people being stalked by warriors who are smart, skilful, ruthless and remorseless. There’s a certain atmosphere of doom and desperation descending upon out gold-crazed adventurers. They haven’t even set eyes on the amazonian warrior girls who are slaughtering them one at a time.

When people talk about Ed Wood Jr there’s a tendency to focus on his most famous and most catastrophically inept movies as a director, such as Plan 9 from Outer space. It’s actually much more interesting to look at Wood’s forays into relatively conventional storytelling, both as director (in his attempt at a noirish crime thriller, Jail Bait) and as screenwriter (in the hugely entertaining girl juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years) and as a novelist. What makes these efforts fascinating is that they are fairly straightforward but with a slightly off-kilter tone and occasional WTF moments.

Revenge of the Virgins follows that pattern. The plot is slightly outlandish but it does not venture into the world of the crazy and impossible. The tone is just slightly odd in an unsettling way. Is this trying to be a gritty dark-edged western or is it deliberately trying to be offbeat? Is it intended to be tongue-in-cheek? It’s hard to be sure, and that’s what makes it interesting.

Revenge of the Virgins is also, in a weird kind of way, a girl gang movie. And Ed Wood was obsessed with girl gangs.

The Apache maidens are all extremely pretty and if you’re into bare breasts you won’t be disappointed.
An oddball movie but I found myself thoroughly enjoying it. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed the classic Ed Wood-scripted juvenile delinquent movie The Violent Years (1956) and his wild juvenile delinquent novel Devil Girls. And I’ve reviewed Jail Bait (1954), the only movie directed by Wood that is almost watchable.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Peter Perry Jr’s sexploitation movies and I recommend all of them - The Notorious Daughter of Fanny Hill (1966), Kiss Me Quick! (1964), My Tale Is Hot (1964) and The Joys of Jezebel (1970).

Red Heat (1985)

Red Heat is a 1985 women-in-prison movie starring Linda Blair. I have to be upfront about this - I’m a major Linda Blair fan. If it’s a sleazy, violent, scuzzy 80s exploitation flick and she’s in it I will watch it.

Red Heat is also a very dark spy thriller. The CIA is undertaking a major espionage operation in Germany involving a female East German scientist who has turned traitor and is selling secrets to the West. The CIA, being the CIA, make an unholy mess of the operation which ends in complete failure and with both the lady scientist and an innocent bystander sentenced to long terms of imprisonment in a horrific East German prison.

The innocent bystander is American college student Christine Carlson (Linda Blair). She has zero interest in politics and was not involved in the operation at all. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Christine’s boyfriend is an American soldier, Mike (William Ostrander). In his innocence he assumes. That the US Government will try to rescue his girlfriend. He soon finds out the truth. The CIA doesn’t give a damn about Christine. They’re too busy covering their own asses and trying to cover up their failure.

As a spy movie this belongs the dark gritty cynical school of spy movies. The East Germans are the bad guys, but the CIA are the bad guys as well. There are no good guys in the worlds of espionage and international politics.

This is a women-in-prison movie so of course there are lesbians. At this point I should perhaps say that if you’re the type of person who expects 80s movies to conform to 2020s political ideologies or if you’re a sensitive soul you are going to hate this movie and you’re going to be upset by it. In which case you should watch some other movie.

Firstly there’s the sadistic lesbian chief warder. There’s also Sofia (Sylvia Kristel). Sofia is serving a life sentence and she’s the queen bee. She shares the lesbian chief warder’s bed and she and her lesbian gang exercise a reign of terror over the other prisoners.

That lady spy mentioned earlier is in the same prison. The East Germans want Christine to befriend her to get her secrets out of her.

Sofia sees Christine as a threat. Christine is a sweet innocent girl but she does have an underlying strength of character that Sofia senses, and that makes Sofia determined to destroy her. Somehow Christine will have to survive, and with only the vaguest hope of eventually, maybe, getting out alive.

Christine’s boyfriend wants to find her but he has no idea where she is and the CIA absolutely refuse to help. It all seems hopeless but he really loves Christine and he’s not going to give up.

This movie starts as a spy thriller. Then for most of its running time it’s a very dark women-in-prison movie. And then at the end it becomes an action thriller. The action scenes come as a relief after the relentless grimness.

There is not a hint of camp to this movie. The spy thriller element is cynical, the prison scenes are harrowing and the climactic action scenes are bloody. This is a tough movie.

This is the sort of thing Linda Blair did so well - playing a nice girl who is pushed too far and learns to become a tough chick avenging angel. Blair had a knack for doing this in a totally convincing way.

One thing I love about Blair is that she didn’t look like a movie star. She was attractive, but in a girl-next-door kind of way rather than a glamorous movie star kind of way. And she could be sexy in a tough-but-sensitive way, and sexy in the way that a regular woman is sexy rather than in a glamourised supermodel or movie star way. She has to convince us that Christine really is a very ordinary girl who learns to do what she has to do in order to survive. Blair does this successfully.

I have heard it suggested that Sylvia Kristel was miscast as Sofia. I totally disagree. She was a fine actress and playing a sadistic psycho bitch was something she was quite capable of doing and she does an excellent job here.

In order to work this movie needed two actresses with charisma, but with the right sort of slightly unconventional charisma. Blair and Kristel work perfectly together. You know that when these two chicks have their final showdown it will be memorable.

It’s a somber film but it’s well-paced and the tension is built up effectively and relentlessly. It’s gripping and it’s entertaining. A must-see for Linda Blair fans, and I’d say it’s a must-see for Sylvia Kristel fans as well as a demonstration of her considerable versatility as an actress. Red Heat is highly recommended.

Red Heat is included in a Women in Prison Triple Feature DVD set. The DVD transfer for Red Heat is rather dark but I suspect that that is actually how the movie was shot. I like the dark scuzzy look the film has.

Red Heat was a follow-up to the excellent 1983 Linda Blair women-in-prison movie Chained Heat. They’re both delightfully sleazy but with a subtly different vibe. Maybe Chained Heat is slightly the better film but both are worth seeing.

Knife of Ice (1972)

Knife of Ice (Il coltello di ghiaccio), released in 1972, was the fourth movie Umberto Lenzi made with star Carroll Baker and it’s a bit of a change of pace.

The first three movies are what I describe as proto-gialli - they have some of the style and feel of the later gialli but there are major differences. They’re stylish erotic thrillers that lack the blood and gore of the full-blown giallo. Knife of Ice is an interesting hybrid. Structurally it’s a giallo but in style and tone it’s a proto-giallo. And it has hints of the supernatural.

This was a Spanish-Italian co-production set in Spain. The bullfight credits sequence seems to have no connection to the rest of the movie but in fact it includes a clue.

Umberto Lenzi co-wrote the screenplay with Antonio Troiso. The original inspiration for this movie was Robert Siodmak’s 1946 classic The Spiral Staircase, a movie for which Lenzi had enormous admiration. Lenzi and Troiso made major changes to the plot so if you know how The Spiral Staircase ends that won’t help you in guessing the ending of Knife of Ice. Lenzi did not want to do a remake but rather a totally different movie taking the 1946 movie as a jumping-off point.

Martha Caldwell (Carroll Baker) arrives at her uncle’s home in Spain with her cousin and best friend Jenny Ascot (Ida Galli). Her uncle suffers from a severe heart complaint. He’s being treated by Dr Laurent (Alan Scott). It’s not quite clear if Dr Laurent is Martha’s boyfriend but they’re obviously close.

Then two murders take place. It seems there is a serial killer on the loose. The police find occult symbols and evidence of a Black Mass having taken place. There are signs that a satanic cult might be active. Two of the central characters have a great interest in the occult. There’s a crazy guy hanging around and he seems to be on the scene when a murder takes place. Inspector Duran (Franco Fantasia) certainly thinks he could be dealing with satanic cult murders.

Then the plot twists start to kick in. Regardless of the identity of the murderer or the motive there’s no doubt that Martha has been marked down for murder.

There’s no shortage of sinister suspects. There’s Martha’s occult-obsessed uncle, there’s the slightly creepy housekeeper, there’s the weird satanist guy, there’s the doctor, there’s the black-clad chauffeur.

Like a full-blown giallo this movie has multiple murders but there are no spectacular murder visual set-pieces. Lenzi is more interested in the atmosphere and in building a sense of dread. We feel that Martha is in great danger but we don’t know why and that adds to the dread.

This movie not only lacks gore, it also has no nudity or sex. That probably hurt it at the box office. Lenzi’s three previous movies with Carrol Baker were sexy thrillers and they were huge hits. Knife of Ice enjoyed much more modest commercial success.

Those earlier Lenzi-Baker movies were very stylish films with an atmosphere of glamour and decadence. In this film Lenzi is aiming for a very different feel. He throws in quite a few gothic horror tropes and the overwhelming tone of the movie is gothic. He keeps us in doubt as to whether it might turn out to be gothic horror or merely gothic melodrama but the gothic vibe is strong. There are plenty of moody creepy fog-bound scenes. It’s obvious that Lenzi was determined not to get stuck in a rut. A couple of years later he would turn the giallo genre upside-down and inside-out with his brilliant Spasmo.

Martha is mute. She isn’t deaf. She experienced an appalling shock as a child (seeing her parents killed in a train accident) and she hasn’t been able to speak since. It’s a challenging role for an actress but Carroll Baker does an excellent job.

Alan Scott is very dull as the doctor but the supporting players are very good.

Knife of Ice is low-key but enthralling and I enjoyed it immensely. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray includes something increasingly rare these days - genuinely worthwhile extras. There’s a longish and very informative interview with Lenzi and a very perceptive video essay by Stephen Thrower.

I’ve also reviewed the first three Lenzi-Baker collaborations, Orgasmo (AKA Paranoia, 1969), So Sweet...So Perverse (1969) and A Quiet Place To Kill (1970).

Murder in a Blue World (1973)

Murder in a Blue World (AKA Una gota de sangre para morir amando AKA A Drop of Blood To Die Loving AKA A Clockwork Terror) is a 1973 Franco-Spanish co-production which is a mishmash of genres. It’s also a bit of a mess.

When it was released Spanish critics accused it of heavily plagiarising Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Director Eloy de la Iglesia reacted with outrage to the accusations but those critics had a point. Large chunks of this movie are lifted directly from Kubrick’s movie. This is not an homage, this is grand larceny. Interestingly the scenes copied from A Clockwork Orange are copied badly. It’s like a backward pupil copying the homework of the smartest kid in the class but still getting the answers wrong.

It has the same kind of not-too-distant future setting as Kubrick’s movie. There is a juvenile delinquency problem. We see a home invasion, carried out by a gang of four juvenile delinquents (just as in Kubrick’s film). We see the gang driving along a quiet country road at high speed (just as in Kubrick’s film). The gang members brutalise the husband and rape the wife (just as in Kubrick’s film). But while the scene in Kubrick’s movie is genuinely disturbing because it’s filmed with so much skill and style the equivalent scene here is dull and obvious and crude.

Then there’s a fight as the gang leader tries to reassert his dominance over the gang (just as in Kubrick’s film).

This ends with David (Christopher Mitchum) being cast out of the gang. Later he will be beaten up up by his former gang-mates (just as in Kubrick’s film).

Dr Sender (Jean Sorel) is working on a new technique of behaviour modification to cure violent offenders (just as in Kubrick’s film). David ends up in custody and is chosen to be one of the experimental subjects (just like Alex in Kubrick’s film).

But Murder in a Blue World is actually more like three or four movies jumbled together without rhyme or reason. There are two main plot strands. The first is the one stolen (sorry, homaged) from A Clockwork Orange.

The second is much more interesting. It’s a serial killer story with some genuinely intriguing and unsettling elements. A number of young men have been murdered. We know that the killer is Ana Vernia (Sue Lyon), a nurse at Dr Sender’s clinic. I’m not revealing a spoiler here - we know she is the killer pretty much from the beginning.

Ana is one crazy chick. She thinks the world is entirely inhabited by dead people who think they are alive. It’s OK to kill them because they’re already dead. In fact she’s doing them a favour, freeing them from their nightmare existence. She is an angel of mercy. Killing them is an at of love. She always has sex with them first - for her the killing is just an extension of the love-making. This is all truly creepy and Sue Lyon is great - she makes this strange confused twisted character oddly believable.

This part of the movie is excellent and it should have been the focus of the whole movie.

Director Eloy de la Iglesia was gay and he adds lots of gay elements that feel like they’ve been shoehorned into the story. There’s a scene in which Ana masquerades as a butch lesbian. Why? I have no idea. There’s also a gay rape which I assume was included to shock the bourgeoisie.

Eloy de la Iglesia was also a communist so there’s political content that is also shoehorned into the story, stuff about the evils of capitalism and consumerism. It’s heavy-handed and embarrassing.

While Sue Lyon is terrific the other main cast members present problems. Christopher Mitchum is very good but he makes David much too sympathetic. A Clockwork Orange works because the viewer feels so conflicted about Alex - he’s so likeable but he’s also a vicious little thug. We are conflicted about the things that are done to him - are they justified or not? David is just likeable. He’s just a slightly naughty little boy. David needed to be given much more of a nasty edge for the Clockwork Orange Rip-Off plot strand to work. I’m not sure if the fault is Mitchum’s or the director’s.


Jean Sorel was a superb subtle actor with an extraordinary knack for playing super-nice charming guys whom we do not trust one little bit. He’s entirely wasted here in a nothing part.

The few really striking images are mostly lifted (sorry, homaged) from Kubrick’s movie.

There’s an attempt to link the two major plot strands but it just doesn’t work. The two stories just don’t mesh. The final scene is just so absurd that it pretty much makes a mockery of the whole movie.


There’s an extraordinary lack of erotic heat, perhaps not surprising given that the director presumably had no interest in male-female eroticism.

Murder in a Blue World is two movies in one, one of them really interesting and one of them a total failure. The Clockwork Orange stuff ends up going nowhere, although maybe the director thought it was some kind of critique of capitalism.

Almost worth seeing for Sue Lyon’s performance and the interesting twists on the serial killer theme but overall it’s a bit of a trainwreck. Hard to recommend this one.

The Panther Women (1967)

The Panther Women (Las mujeres panteras) is a 1967 Mexican wrestling women movie but it’s also a Santo movie, without Santo. It’s also a witchcraft in the modern world movie.

We open with what seems to be a Satanic ritual. This is actually the Panther Women cult. It’s left a little bit vague is to whether these are actual Satanists or whether it’s a pagan cult (I lean towards the latter explanation). Whatever they are they are clearly up to no good.

The leader of the cult is the glamorous but evil Satanasa (María Douglas). Centuries before this the founder of the cult, Eloim, had been killed by a member of the Pietrasanta family. Before dying Eloim vowed vengeance on Pietrasanta’s descendants. Satanasa intends to be the agent of that vengeance. The killing the last surviving members of the Pietrasanta family will bring Eloim back to life. The culmination of the ritual killings will be the sacrifice of the youngest Pietrasanta, a girl named Paquita.

The weapons Satanasa intends to use are two panther women. They’re lady wrestlers who can transform into panthers.

Famous lady wrestlers Loreta Venus (Ariadne Welter) and Golden Rubi (Elizabeth Campbell) are determined to foil this evil scheme.

Cop Capitán Arturo Díaz (Eric del Castillo) knows he’s going to need outside help so he calls on El Angel (played by pro wrestler and actor Gerardo Zepeda). El Angel is a pro wrestler who moonlights as a masked crimefighter. His identity is a secret. He is also a scientific genius and he has a secret laboratory. He has a secret radio link to police headquarters. Yes, he’s Santo in all but name.

The Pietrasantas get hunted down one by one.

The panther woman do their transformation thing in the wrestling ring.

Eloim is revived, but he’s a shambling zombie-like creature. Eventually there will be a showdown between Eloim and El Angel.

The big problem with this movie is El Angel. He’s fine, but he takes over the movie. As does Eloim. There’s just not enough focus on the Panther Women and the two wrestling women heroines. They’re the most interesting characters but they’re reduced to being minor supporting players.

The big drawcard here is Tongolele as one of the Panther Woman. Tongolele is a legend in Mexico as a dancer and burlesque star. She looks amazing, she was a sultry exotic dancer and she has charisma.

María Douglas makes a fine sinister villainess. Elizabeth Campbell is great as Golden Rubi but doesn’t get anywhere near enough to do.

There are some decent fight scenes, Tongolele does a great sexy dance and there are the obligatory wrestling scenes.

René Cardona was a very experienced director and he keeps things moving along. It’s a very competently made movie. Alfredo Salazar was also an experienced screenwriter but his script isn’t focused enough.

El Angel looks cool. The makeup effects for Eloim are very cool and very creepy. The Panther Woman makeup effects and costumes really needed a lot more thought.

Wrestling was and is a huge part of Mexican popular culture so wrestling hero movies had a guaranteed audience.

This was the fourth of the 60s luchadora (lady wrestler) movies. Despite its problems it’s good fun. Panther Women is worth a look but there are much better Mexican cult movies from that era, such as the magnificent The Bat Woman.

The Powerhouse Indicator Blu-Ray offers a nice transfer wth an informative audio commentary. There’s also a booklet of essays, and a lot of pretentious nonsense they are too.