Franco Nero – Missile Test

Italian movie star Franco Nero has appeared in almost 200 films. I haven’t seen them all, but I’ve seen enough that I’m confident half could be included in the Shitty Movie Sundays Watchability Index. That’s not a knock on Nero. He wants to work a lot, and he has the opportunity to do so. Good for him. But, such profligacy does have costs. Sometimes, he takes a role in a total dog like Top Line.

Released in 1988, Top Line is an Italian production directed by Nello Rossati, from a screenplay by Rossati and Roberto Gianviti. The movie follows Nero as Ted Angelo, an alcoholic novelist who has just been dropped by his publisher while he’s in Colombia researching ancient civilizations and the age of European explorers. Continue reading “Top Line”

Enter the Ninja, the 1981 karate flick from legendary producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, is just about the quintessential movie from The Cannon Group, Golan-Globus’s company. Cannon is synonymous with shitty cinema, alongside other giants as Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, American International Pictures, and Dino De Laurentiis. Like these examples, not everything Cannon made was shit, but enough was for the reputation to be deserved.

Directed by Golan himself, Enter the Ninja tells the tale of Cole, an American who has just completed his studies in Japan to become a real, honest-to-goodness ninja. Ninja are quite the anachronism these days, but that doesn’t stop there being a whole dojo full of these guys.

Cole is played by Franco Nero, an Italian actor who just happened to be around when Enter the Ninja had been filming and Golan needed a new lead. The way the internet tells it, so it must be true, is the movie had been filming with martial artist Mike Stone in the lead role. The movie was his brainchild, and he got a story credit alongside screenwriter Dick Desmond. Stone even choreographed the fights. But, so the tale goes, he couldn’t act. Enter Franco Nero, who could act, but couldn’t speak English without an Italian accent, or fight like Stone. No matter. That’s small stuff. Golan’s solution was to dub Nero’s voice with that of Marc Smith, and retain Stone as Nero’s stunt double. That’s how movies are made, folks. Continue reading “Enter the Ninja, or, The Colonials are Having a Tiff”