Movieline Online

The modern zombie film may have been invented in America, but its real evolution took place in Italy. While the undead were still shambling around shopping malls in the states, Italian zombies were wielding machine guns ( Nightmare City ), battling sharks ( Zombie ) and laying siege to castles with battering rams in copycat quickies like Andrea Bianchi's Burial Ground (1980), a pasty-faced piece of exploitation filmmaking made all the more notorious by a tasteless bit of oedipal violence that still has the power to trigger your gag reflex! Vacationing at a family estate, a wealthy host and his guests are trapped inside after an archeological dig resurrects the angry remnants of the local peasant population. But locked doors and barred windows won't keep out this horde of vengeful corpses! Despite their rotting frames, these zombies use a wide array of tools, weaponry and good 'ol undead ingenuity to break in and extract their pound of raw flesh. Using Lucio Fulci...

Cannon Films didn't launch too many careers, but they certainly extended quite a few of them. The prolific producing team of Golan-Globus made the most out of their small budgets by featuring not-ready-for-prime-time players like Chuck Norris and past -their-prime action stars like Charles Bronson who likely would have been put out to pasture by the major studios. Even the behind-the-camera talent was full of wily veterans who knew who to crank out a movie with minimal fuss. That the final product was mediocre was really beside the point; Cannon always seemed to have an endless supply of B-movie ammunition ready to reload and try again. Murphy's Law (1986) is one of the more bland pictures to come out of the Cannon factory, starring Bronson as a recently divorced, perpetually drunk cop who gets framed for gunning down his ex-wife. While in a holding cell, he stages a breakout with a foul-mouthed, female prisoner in tow (literally...they're handcuffed together!), s...

To call Charles Bronson a "one-note actor" isn't necessarily an insult. After all, a talented musician can make beautiful music out of the simplest of instruments. And Bronson used his talents wisely, playing within his admittedly limited range of tough guys and flawed heroes, never failing to keep the audience on the edge of their seat. He was the sort of actor who could carry an entire picture with a few words and a thoughtful squint. And he was rarely asked to do anything more. But From Noon Till Three (1976) has Bronson singing am entirely different tune as Graham Dorsey, a wayward bank-robbing romantic who falls hard for lonely debutante Amanda Starbuck (Jill Ireland) living in on a desolate piece of prairie. During their short three-hour window of time before Graham's partners are due to arrive, the pair fall into an ecstatic affair that, ironically, begins with an attempted rape and culminates in a black-tie ballroom soiree. But Graham's partners ...

Produced just as the exploitation market was winding down, Manhattan Baby (1982) also finds director Lucio Fulci at the tail end of his collaboration with writer / producer combo, Dardano Sacchetti and Fabrizio De Angelis, the same team was responsible for a string of gore-heavy Fulci classics like The Beyond and House by the Cemetery . But here the pendulum swings towards ancient mysticism and optical effects, bypassing the usual blood and guts in favor of exotic curses and Egyptian tombs. It might be a bit of an adjustment for Fulci's more rabid fans, but the execution still bears all the marks of his indelible cinematic signature. Archeologist George Hacker (Christopher Connelly) and his family return from Egypt with a deadly curse in tow. George himself has been blinded by a sacred amulet - the very same one that has now taken possession of his daughter's soul - causing several deadly accidents to those who attempt to dispose of it. The victims are sent into paralle...

In Hollywood, as in life, timing is everything. Perhaps if the whimsically entertaining Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins , based on the more serious-minded series of Destroyer novels by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, had been made today it would bear a much closer resemblance to the source material, with its "blue-collar Bond" mimicking the ruthless attitudes of modern action stars like Bourne, John Wick and 007 himself. But in 1985, Bond was still played mostly for laughs and a movie about a hired assassin, despite working for the good guys, had to play by the same rules. Recruited and re-named, against his wishes, by a secret organization that answers only to the President, former cop Remo Williams (Fred Ward) is trained in the ancient - and imaginary - art of Sinanju by his aged, but still exceedingly capable, tutor Chiun (Joel Grey) for the purpose of eliminating certain threats to national security. This time around, that threat is embodied by a greedy arms de...

1981's Eye of the Needle was the last notable starring role for Donald Sutherland, whose suspiciously angular features and heavy-lidded stare made him a perfect leading man for the morally questionable '70s. The actor was adept at playing both sides, luring in an audience with slovenly sincerity ( M.A.S.H. ) then chilling them with unexpected emotional aloofness ( The Disappearance ). It's a gift that has kept his career going far past the normal expiration date, and a perfect fit for the role of Heinrich "The Needle" Faber, a Nazi spy who jeopardizes his mission by falling for a lonely housewife on a stormy British isle. The movie begins with Faber on the run from British Intelligence who've finally got a positive ID and a witness to go with it. But Faber, whose weapon of choice is a switchblade stiletto, evades capture again, carrying along vital information about the impending Allied invasion. But his attempt to rendezvous with a German U-boat resu...

In an age when boutique labels are blessing some of the worst B-movies ever made with outrageous special editions, does anyone even bother with the bargain bins anymore? There was a time when public domain horror and sci-fi titles were overflowing from their wire-domain holding tanks, plastered with corny new cover art in an attempt to pass them off as current releases. Now fans know better. Even the most obscure title is likely to turn up on a better disc someday. It just depends on how long one is willing to wait! In the case of The Giant Gila Monster and The Killer Shrews , a classic drive-in double-feature shot back-to-back in 1959 just outside Dallas, Texas, there might be some light at the end of the tunnel in the form of Bayview Entertainment and Retromedia's new DVD release. Sporting the first widescreen 16 X 9 anamorphic transfers, it's certainly the best looking presentation to date for the pair that seemed condemned to public domain purgatory. But The films...

Horror-comedies were like the peanut butter-n-chocolate of the '80s: packaged for easy consumption, the two genres were a good match for a decade more interested generating laughs than genuine scares. An American Werewolf in London, Night of the Creeps , even the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre was sequelized (quite successfully) as a black comedy rather than a bleak slasher. Lost in the shuffle was Vamp (1986), produced under Roger Corman's New World banner, which took an almost impossibly puerile set-up - college kids, vampires and strippers - and whipped up something cutesy, colorful and unique. Prospective fraternity members AJ and Keith (Robert Rusler and Chris Makepeace) head into a sketchy part of downtown L.A. to hire a stripper for an upcoming soiree, catching a ride with wealthy dork (Gedde Watanabe) who hires their friendship for the week. They quickly identify the club's main attraction, Katrina (Grace Jones), as their first choice. But Katrina and th...

A Canadian-produced horror film shot in the small town of Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, The Pit (1981) is an outlier amongst the usual slasher and body-horror flicks Canucks were producing at the time. Combining mental illness, pubescent hormones, evil teddy bears and flesh-eating cavemen, the kitchen-sink approach often feels creatively cramped and unintentional campy. But there are some disturbing ideas underneath it all that discerning (or maybe forgiving ) horror fans might find by scratching the surface. 12-year-old Jamie Benjamin (Sammy Snyders) is a bit on the odd side. Shunned by his parents and unable to make friends, Jamie has an unhealthy obsession with the opposite sex, which makes him even more unappealing to the teachers at his new school. But babysitter Sandy O'Reilly (Jeannie Elias) is willing to give it a shot. Taking care of Jamie while his parents are away, she finds herself sympathizing with him and trying to temper his hormonal impulses. But unfortunately the ...