Super Bitch (Massimo Dallamano, 1973) DVD Review

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“We've got a job that needs a specialist.” The 1970s were a dangerous time in Italy. Sometimes dubbed 'the Years of Lead', and rocked by the likes of the Red Brigade, tough criminal actions begot tough police responses. It was from this raging inferno that the 'poliziotteschi' genre was born, featuring hard-boiled coppers akin to Dirty Harry and his ilk, but with a uniquely Italian swagger to them and their violent actions. These Euro cop flicks thrived alongside the scintillating violence of the more enduring gialli movement, with thrills and excesses to match. Massimo Dallamano finely crafted a superb giallo in the form of What Have You Done To Solange? and mixed the trappings of those gory murder mysteries with the poliziotteschi in What Have They Done To Your Daughters?, but with Super Bitch – aka Blue Movie Blackmail – it was all about crooked cops and drug smuggling.

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Triple Bill Mini Musings: Cretins and Coppers...

Return to Nuke Em High Volume 1:
What's it about?
The latest 'Tromasterpiece' from director Lloyd Kaufman which returns to the titular high school where these days it's genetically modified food, rather than nuclear waste, that's turning goody-two-shoes students into punked-out cretins.
Who would I recognise in it?
Lloyd Kaufman and some other familiar faces from the Troma entourage.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
The main problem with Volume 1 is just that - it's half a movie - there is no real three act arc over the duration of the first film, and so it all cuts off just as things are really beginning to escalate. We'll have to wait until Volume 2 to see the chaos unfold and for the story to be resolved, but for now it's frustrating to just get what is essentially half of a three hour movie. On the plus side, recent Troma flicks have boasted higher production values while maintaining their over-the-top independent spirit and style. Not for the faint-hearted or easily offended, it's a screaming-mad, dial-up-to-eleven, full-frontal assault of bad taste, nudity, gore, and Kevin The Wonder Duck. Not their best - mostly due to cutting us off half-way-through - but far, far, far from their worst. An enjoyably tasteless Troma romp. Good.

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Eyeball (Umberto Lenzi, 1975) Review

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Umberto Lenzi is best known for such violence-spewing film fare as Nightmare City and Cannibal Ferox, but as a director who dipped his toe into numerous pools, some of his other work has faded into the background. Lenzi's optic-bothering giallo Eyeball is one such obscure effort.

“The flowers of death? I'm far from ready.” A bus-load of American tourists are in Barcelona to see the sights but, for some, the glint of a raised dagger will be the last image to flash across their moist little peepers. The holidaying ensemble are a motley bunch – the unhappily married Alvarados, a grandfather with his bored granddaughter Jenny, shifty-looking Reverend Bronson (George Rigaud, The Case of the Bloody Iris), letchy photographer Lisa and her lesbian muse Naiba, all leaving secretary Paulette (Martine Brochard) looking positively dull by comparison.

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The Case of the Bloody Iris (Giuliano Carnimeo, 1971) DVD Review...

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With The Case of the Bloody Iris, fans of gialli will experience one of the era's best examples, particularly as it shares much of the same talent as another prime representative of the lurid murder mystery movement – The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh (Sergio Martino, 1971). Both films star Edwige (Strip Nude For Your Killer, Phantom of Death) Fenech and George (My Dear Killer, All The Colours of the Dark) Hilton, while boasting superb scripts from Ernesto (Torso, Almost Human) Gastaldi, and crystalline editing by Eugenio (Oasis of Fear, The Good The Bad and The Ugly) Alabiso. Suffice to say, if you were a fan of landmark giallo The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, you will be treated to a similarly luxuriant banquet of sumptuous visuals, sinister chills, and otherworldly beauty...

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