MILAN CALIBRE 9 (1972) **

Gastone Moschin gets out of jail and is almost immediately accused of stealing $300,000 from the Mob.  Naturally, he’s innocent, but if he wants to keep breathing he has to go to work for them to pay it off.   The police want to use him as a snitch too, and if the Mob begins to suspect he’s in cahoots with the cops, he’ll REALLY be trouble.  To come out on top, Moschin must figure out a way to double-cross both the Mob AND the police.

Fernando Di Leo’s Milan Calibre 9 was the first chapter in his Milieu Trilogy.  Unlike the second installment, Man Hunt, it’s far too slow moving to leave much of an impression.  The constant plotting by not only the hero, but the villains as well, causes the pacing to hit a wall many times throughout.  We occasionally get a taste of Di Leo’s trademark violence, but there’s ultimately too much talk and not enough action. 

Moschin is much too stone-faced to make a good leading man.  He looks like the love child of Bruce Willis and Nicholas Worth.  Or maybe Jason Statham after a bee sting.  Either way, he’s so dull that the audience has a hard time rooting for him.

The supporting cast fares much better.  Whenever Barbara Bouchet is on screen, she gives the movie a much-needed shot in the arm.  She has a terrific go-go dancing scene that is easily the most memorable thing about the film.  I also enjoyed the interactions between Luigi Pistilli and Frank Wolff as the cops who are hounding Moschin.  While their sociopolitical discussions drag the plot down a bit, they are nevertheless fun to watch.  

It’s Wolff who gets the best line when he tells Moschin to "Go play with a dangling dingleberry!"

AKA:  Caliber 9.

ANGST (1983) ****

Erwin Leder stars as a mentally ill man who goes to a random house and shoots the occupant when she answers the door.  He goes to jail for ten years and when he is released, he immediately sets out to satiate his bloodlust.  After missing his chance to kill a taxi driver, he takes off into the woods where he finds a remote country house.  It’s here where he begins to terrorize a family.

Leder is great as the cold-blooded psychopath and all, but the camerawork is the real star here.  Having the camera attached to his body feels a bit disorienting at first.  However, as time goes by, it helps to put the audience squarely in the killer’s shoes throughout most of the running time.  Because of that, there is often no turning away from the horror.  (This technique would later be used on several reality shows.)  Another impressive camera move is the long crane shot that looms over the prison walls as Leder is being released.

The film’s clever use of narration heightens the sensation that we are in the killer’s shoes.  We hear him telling us trivial biographical tidbits while he’s committing unspeakable acts.  Not because he’s trying to, you know, justify what he’s doing, but to tell you more about himself.  

The opening scenes are equally effective, even though they use a completely different style.  This part of the film almost feels like a true crime show.  We are shown several crime scene photos, pictures of the killer as a child, and court documents while a morose narrator tells of his various crimes.  (It was supposedly based on true events.)  

All of this adds up to an unflinching, harrowing moviegoing experience.  While the murders themselves aren’t particularly graphic, it’s that feeling of being under the killer’s skin that is so unnerving.  It would make a perfect double feature with Henry:  Portrait of a Serial Killer, although you’d probably be too depressed to sit through them both.

AKA:  Schizophrenia.  AKA:  Fear.

THE ASPHYX (1972) **

The Asphyx has moments where it threatens to work.  That is when it’s not getting bogged down with a lot of stuffy British costume drama bullshit.  Much of the running time is spent with two boors having dull spiritual conversations in a parlor, which really cuts into all the corny, but fun supernatural shenanigans.

Robert Stephens stars as a scientist who takes pictures of people when they die and every time, he sees the same smudge on the photos.  He concludes that it could only be the soul leaving the body.  He then sets out to catch the specter (which he dubs “the asphyx”) that claims the souls.  His rationale being if he can steal his asphyx, he can become immortal.

When the ghostly shit finally does happen, it’s a bit hokey, but relatively amusing.  The scene where Stephens and his partner try to capture the asphyx plays like a 19^th century version of Ghostbusters.  (They shine a light on it and try to force it into a glass lamp.)  The special effects for the asphyx are a little wonky.  It just looks like a puppet being reflected with a disco light.  These scenes do get a bit repetitive after a while though.  

It all begins to get dumb when the scientists stage these elaborate deaths for themselves that they must wriggle out of at the last second in order to summon the asphyx.  The bit with the extravagant gas chamber was particularly eye-rolling.  However, we do get at least one nifty scene involving a guillotine, but the movie needed more sequences of this caliber to truly crackle.  Too bad it all builds to a lame Twilight Zone type of ending that features some bad make-up and a frustrating final shot.

AKA:  Spirit of the Dead.  AKA:  The Horror of Death.  AKA:  Experiments.  

SLIME CITY (1988) ** ½

Was it the Himalayan yogurt?  Or was it the old wizard’s moonshine?  Maybe it was all the sex with his punk rock neighbor.  Whatever the reason, Alex (Craig Saban) begins getting slimy soon after moving into his new apartment building.  Naturally, the only way to stop his body from being coated in slime is to kill homeless guys and prostitutes. 

Hey, we've all been there, right?

Director Gregory (Killer Rack) Lamberson’s Slime City plays like an amateurish and cheap mash-up of The Incredible Melting Man and Street Trash, with a little bit of Rosemary’s Baby tossed in there for good measure.  The acting is uneven, and the pacing is erratic.  That’s acceptable though seeing as the gooey special effects are the main selling point.  

As far as would-be low budget cult items from the ‘80s go, Slime City is better than say, your typical Troma movie.  While the slimy transformation scenes and sloppy murder sequences are fun, the stuff in between the highlights can be rough-going at times.  Still, there enough show-stopping gore in the last ten minutes to make up for many of its shortcomings.  While it’s easy to spot a lot of seams in the gory gags, they remain rather impressive given the film’s miniscule budget and the fact that there are so many of them.  Those scenes aren’t enough to qualify it as a classic or anything, but overall, it’s a decent slice of ‘80s cheese.

AKA:  The Slime.

THIRST (1979) **

Kate (Chantal Contouri) is kidnapped by a team of vampire scientists who claim she's a descendant of Countess Elizabeth Bathory.  She doesn't believe them, and tries to escape, but the scientists hold her prisoner.  Since Kate refuses to drink blood, they put her through elaborate mental torture in order to shock her system in the hopes of making her remember her vampire past.

Thirst gains points for an inventive mythology, but the unorthodox approach yields minimal results.  There are some good ideas here, yet it’s all put together with little finesse.  While the film adds interesting wrinkles to the usually accepted vampire lore, director Rod (Nick Fury:  Agent of SHIELD) Hardy’s delivery is much too stiff for any of this to be fun, let alone scary.  

I did like the scenes on the “Blood Farm” where innocent people in white pajamas mill around and are used as walking blood banks.  These sequences felt like they came out of Parts:  The Clonus Horror.  There’s also a dairy that packages blood in milk cartons.  Another nice touch revolves around how vampires shower.  The red faucet doesn’t stand for hot water; it stands for blood.  There were certainly enough of these little flourishes here to warrant a good movie.  It’s just a shame that Hardy’s pacing is much too slow, and the stuff with the scientists is so predictable.

PATRICK (1979) **

Patrick (Robert Thompson) catches his mom screwing a guy in her bathtub and electrocutes them.  After that, he slips into a coma for many years.  He’s admitted to a sketchy hospital where the nutty doctor (Robert Helpmann) performs all sorts of twisted experiments on him.  His new nurse Kathy (Susan Penhaligon) takes a shine to the unresponsive Patrick, but all the poor dope can do is spit in her face.  Patrick begins to get feelings for Kathy too and he begins to communicate with her telepathically (telePatrickly?) through her typewriter.  Pretty soon, people close to her start dying.  Is Patrick getting jealous?  Will Kathy be next?

Director Richard Franklin apes Hitchcock when he can (this was his dry-run for Psycho 2), especially during the scenes where people climb stairs.  Unlike Hitchcock, he doesn’t have much of a knack for pacing.  The plot drags its feet throughout much of the running time and when something does happen, it’s not all that scary or anything.  The only real reason you hang in there as long as you do is because of Penhaligon’s fine performance.

Patrick runs a long 108 minutes and it’s awfully slow going for the most part.  If Franklin wanted to keep things crackling, the film needed a nip here and a tuck there, especially seeing as the best stuff is weighted towards the final reel.  It does have at least one memorable jump scare, but that’s not quite enough to hang an entire movie on.

AKA:  Coma.

TRAILER TRAUMA PART 4: TELEVISION TRAUMA (2017) ****

Garagehouse Pictures’ Trailer Trauma 3:  80s Horrorthon was the be-all end-all horror trailer compilation.  Clocking in at almost eight hours, it was a mindboggling collection of some of the best horror trailers the ‘80s had to offer.  Now the folks at Garagehouse are faced with a dilemma:  What to do for an encore?  How can one top the biggest trailer compilation of all time?

The answer is simple.  You go smaller.  A lot smaller.  

That’s right, Trailer Trauma Part 4:  Television Trauma is a collection of TV spots for some of the best exploitation movies known to man.  Most of the spots are only about a minute long (many are only thirty seconds), so the exploitation goodness comes at you fast and furious.  All your favorite genres are covered.  It begins with a lot of ads for Roger Corman’s New World films (everything from Women in Prison to Naughty Nurses) before heading into Italian horror (there are a lot of Dario Argento and Mario Bava titles), Godzilla movies, Kung Fu flicks, softcore comedies, and American horror.  

Many of your favorite films are here including The Toolbox Murders, Doctor Butcher M.D., and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  There’s also enough oddball curios and hard-to-find rarities (The Cremators, Big Zapper, and Summer Camp) mixed in throughout the collection.  The various rerelease trailers are also a lot of fun and it’s neat to see how they were often repackaged for double features (like the ones for Phantasm).  Among the entertaining double feature trailers are The Velvet Vampire/Scream of the Demon Lover, Beyond the Door 2/The Dark, and Curse of the Headless Horseman/Carnival Blood.  

The disc is an interesting reminder of what was deemed appropriate for television during the ‘70s and ‘80s.  Since the previews were all meant for television, they don’t feature any nudity, but they do contain grisly gory images that wouldn’t fly today.  Also note how various curse words are bleeped out while the N-Word is tossed around quite freely.  

I can’t say Television Trauma is as exhaustive and complete as its predecessor.  Speaking as a connoisseur of trailer compilations, I can say that using strictly television spots was a stroke of genius.  I can’t wait to see what they have up their sleeve for their next edition.